Given the progressive drift in Italy, as well as cultural changes, a predicted nationalist PM will not be able to take the country in a Hungarian-Polish direction.

A victory for the right in next month’s Italian election, with the prospect of the country’s first female Prime Minister – Giorgia Meloni – is provoking panic in the European Union (EU), amid fears of a Viktor Orbán-like figure in the heart of western Europe and the historic heart of European Catholicism. There are concerns that a coalition of Forza Italia, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and nationalist Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord will take Italy down a far-right path and implode the EU to boot. But the reality, as is often the case, is far less dramatic and the Meloni meltdown wholly unwarranted.  

That is not to say Meloni doesn’t speak the language of culture warriors. She does. In June, for instance, she said: “the secular left and radical Islam are menacing our roots … Either say yes, or say no. Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobbies … Yes to the universality of the cross, no to Islamist violence. Yes to secure borders, no to mass immigration.” But there is little chance of Italy going the way of Hungary and Poland, on the other side of Europe’s great cultural divide. To be clear, the great schism seen across Europe – dividing a liberal west from a conservative east – is playing out in Italy too. But Italy has something in common with America, where the forces of right and left – religious and secular – are also battling it out, but where demographic and cultural trends mean the conservatives are often fighting a losing battle.

While the conservative nationalist countries of central and eastern Europe were shielded behind the Iron Curtain from the 60s counterculture, Italy was exposed to the shockwave along with the rest of western Europe and the Anglosphere. Italy has since become a generally progressive society with a largely open border, even if attitudes towards immigrants remain generally more hostile than in north-western Europe. Meanwhile, although the Catholic Church is still based inside Rome – and Italians pay more lip service to God than the British, French or Germans – Italy has still succumbed to the forces of secularism.

Between 2006 and 2020, for instance, weekly church attendance fell from 18.3 million to 12 million. Plus, as in much of western Europe, there is overrepresentation among older people and children brought along. Italy is consequently today very much in the western half of the European cultural divide. Despite the secularism on display in western Europe, this divide offers two competing visions of the Christian faith. As Niall Gooch recently explained, for Orbán, “the guiding light of politics is the continuity and integrity of a particular community and its particular way of life rooted in Christianity.” By contrast, “the Pope shows little interest in the idea of preserving any given country as a Christian nation.” 

This schism is also playing out in Italy, but with one side having the upper hand. As Mattia Ferraresi explained for Foreign Policy, Italian Catholics are also divided between traditionalists and supporters of Pope Francis. According to Ferraresi, “Salvini’s quasi-papal attitude in the name of an ethnonationalist interpretation of the faith” sits “in stark contrast with Pope Francis’s vision”. This creates two churches. The first “is focused on social justice, welcoming migrants, helping the poor, protecting the environment, defending the virtues of the European Union, and building bridges rather than walls.” The second “stresses the importance of tradition and defending the so-called Judeo-Christian West from mass immigration, pledges to protect the traditional family, and fights permissive laws on abortion and LGBT rights.”

But, Catholicism in Italy is still crashing and barely a quarter of the country’s Catholics practise regularly. In stark contrast, in central and eastern Europe the wind is in the sails of leaders like Orbán, or Poland’s Law and Justice Party. In central and eastern Europe, Christianity has roared back to life after communism, giving traditionalists the upper hand. Hungary and Poland can also embrace conservative policies because domestic conditions enable them to. These are re-Christianised societies with national cohesion, where governments can put in place family-friendly policies which would be rejected by great chunks of Italian society as well as much of its political class.

On this alone, Meloni (and Salvini) face an uphill struggle. Still, it is also worth mentioning the EU, an ideologically liberal and secular grouping forever at odds with conservative member states in the bloc’s east. Indeed, when Brussels battles with Hungary and Warsaw over apparent rule-of-law violations, the latter generally believe this is a thinly-veiled attempt to impose liberal vales upon them. This isn’t to say Italians aren’t Eurosceptic. In 2020, for instance, just 32 per cent of Italians said being in the EU had been good for their country, and many on the Italian right make Eurosceptic noises. 

But Italy – unlike most countries in central and eastern Europe – is also part of the eurozone, the currency union many EU members signed up to.  Since the likes of Hungary and Poland never joined this economic straightjacket, they could more easily extricate themselves from the bloc than Italy. Moreover, most countries of central and eastern Europe are likely to be net EU contributors by 2030. Italy, by contrast, is stuck. Brussels knows – whatever noises come out of Rome – Italy cannot leave the EU without quitting the eurozone, which would cause economic meltdown. On this issue – as on the cultural trends – Meloni’s hands are largely tied and her country on a train which has probably already left the station. Whatever pushback the Italian right attempts, the die has likely already been cast.

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