As GMM writes, the eurozone is in trouble with a capital T.
Giorgia Meloni’s electric performances at political rallies have made her a virtual shoo-in to become Italy’s first female prime minister in Sunday’s ballot. She’ll also be the first to campaign with the flame symbol, evoking the former fascist leader, Benito Mussolini.
The prospect of a charismatic nationalist taking power with almost no government experience has investors and officials on edge. Italy, of course, is wrestling with the fallout from the most serious conflict in Europe since WWII. But the country has been adrift for years, struggling to hit on a formula which can unlock its potential while staying true to its identity.
Von der Leyen added that those same tools are already being used against Hungary and Poland.
“We will see the result of the vote in Italy,” said von der Leyen.
“If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”
Von der Leyen made the comment after a journalist at Princeton University in the United States said that there were candidates in the Italian elections “close to Putin” and asked her how the EU would react if they were elected.
The comments from the EU commission president, arguably the most powerful figure in all of EU institutions, have been met with shock from the Italian political class.
Von Der Leyen was making a clear reference to the European Commission’s ability to cut funding to member states it views as violating “rule of law,” a powerful tool Brussels can use to punish any democratically-elected government in Europe. Just last week, the commission proposed cutting €7.5 billion in funding to Hungary, with the country’s conservative government having long been a thorn in the side of the EU over its opposition to mass migration and support for traditional values.
Italian politicians are already responding to von der Leyen’s threat.
“What is this, a threat? This is shameful arrogance,” tweeted Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League party. He asked von der Leyen to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people.”
He also said on Italian TV that “if anyone in Brussels thinks of cutting the funds that belong to Italy, because the League wins the elections, then we have to rethink this Europe,” adding that “this is institutional bullying.”
Everyone with the power to make a decision was placed there not by popular vote but by backroom collusion.
As we approach this weekend’s Italian elections there is real despair in the air that there is any light out of this dark time. That no matter what decisions we try to make, they are only in service of those that seek total dominion.
And yet all you hear from these Eurocrats is that we are in a “war of Democracy versus Autocracy,” as EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen put it in her hellish EU state of the union address to the European Parliament recently.
Cloaking herself in the inverse of the EU flag’s colors to show solidarity with another anti-democratic regime, Ukraine, Von der Leyen and her merry tribe of vandals in Brussels cast themselves as the protectors of the sacred right of a ‘democracy’ they deny to anyone who disagrees with her.
The same can be said for nearly every major government in Europe. Every time an ‘election’ rolls around the local system is gamed to ensure a particular outcome. The political establishment always coalesces around maintaining the status quo, freezing out any possibility of an ‘unworkable’ or ‘representative’ coalition.
Any outcome they can’t overcome that lies outside the scope of the EU’s values is either laden with poison pills, immediately put under pressure by the EU’s Byzantine rules, and eventually forced out of office.
There is no better example of this anti-democratic structure made flesh than Italy.
For more than a decade Italians have been saddled with mostly-unelected technocratic governments who, at best, stymie any populist/sovereigntist impulses within Italy’s electorate or, at worst, advance the EU’s centralization agenda under the false rubrics of Climate Change and “European Values.”
European Values is a phrase that is synonymous with the phrase “rules-based order.” We make the rules, they say, and you abide by them. We’re allowed to break those rules because 1) we can and 2) we are the goodies.
So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that as the Italians go to the polls this weekend with the center-right coalition led by the Brothers of Italy (FdI) likely to win a major, uncontestable victory, the unelected, openly totalitarian President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, openly threaten Italians to ‘vote right’ or face her wrath.
Corrupted unelected bureacurat Von der Leyen threatens the Italians: “We will see the result of the vote in Italy. If things go in a difficult direction, we have tools, as in the case of Poland and Hungary.” This is called meddling in elections VDL
I’ll be honest. Seeing that threat issued towards inherently disagreeable Italians coming from a German bureaucrat will not go as she thinks it will.
When you run out of the power to persuade people the only things left is threats (no matter how empty) and subterfuge. Italy has been trended towards this moment for over a decade and to this point subterfuge has worked particularly well for the EU.
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