The howling of the wolf, is it the same wolf?

Since her victory, Georgia Meloni has been asking for some calm from the press in her country and from analysts fearful of a radical change in government policies in Italy, with the historic arrival of the far-right to power.

On her Twitter account @GiorgiaMeloni posted a photo alluding to the front pages of La Stampa and La Repubblica, which she accompanied with the following caption: "I find it quite surreal that certain media are inventing my inverted commas out of thin air, publishing completely arbitrary reconstructions. Calm down: the united centre-right has won the elections and is ready to govern. No more mystifications".

In the last election in Italy - the third largest economy in the European Union (EU) - the dice have been cast not only for the country of the boot, but also from Brussels the bodies and institutions of the European club are analysing the electoral map of their respective member countries, somewhat wary of the future of the Union: the ultra-right and the ultra-left are not always compatible with the spirit of Maastricht.

The fact that Italy is the first EU country to be governed by the ultra-right is being analysed from various angles, although there are some voices that try to appease the predictions of a return to the fascism of the past by pointing out that the current ultra-right has been watered down and that the wolf, that wolf, is barely howling.

In the opinion of Pedro González, founder of Euronews, the joke or the alibi that the left had for scaring people with the extreme right and fascism is over.

"The arrival of a woman from a conservative right-wing party that had its origins in the Italian social movement has buried the trompe l'oeil of fascism as an alibi and a pretext for people who do not vote for the left. They have tried to foresee apocalyptic consequences of Meloni's coming to power, but nothing of the sort will happen, much less will the European Union disintegrate because of it", the creator of Canal 24 horas categorically affirms.

At the moment everything is uncertain because it remains to be seen how the resulting government will be formed in Italy after the triumph of the coalition formed by Meloni and the far-right Brothers of Italy (26% of the votes received); together with another far-right leader, Matteo Salvini, of the League (9% of the votes) and the incombustible Silvio Berlusconi, of Forza Italia (8% of the votes). This right-wing bloc obtained 43% of the votes, which also gives it an absolute majority in Congress and the Senate to carry out the relevant reforms.

The young Meloni, a journalist and politician by training - 45 years old - was a precocious neo-Nazi activist who became a member of the People in Freedom party.  Berlusconi invited her into his government as youth minister.

Meloni's discourse is clear and sometimes even sensationalist. She knows how to take advantage of her communication skills to launch clear messages that appeal to the masses in front of the microphones: "I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian and I am a Christian".

The new prime minister is ready to continue making history not only by being the first woman to reach such a high position, but also by doing so with a party she herself founded called the Brothers of Italy.

A few weeks before the elections she was invited to Spain by the far-right Vox party and took part in a rally with other supporters of the same ideology, reiterating her "no to difference, no to abortion and no to homosexual marriage" almost like a mantra during her message.

It is no secret that the three right-wing bloc parties that have come to power (Berlusconi has won a seat in the Senate after being expelled from it in 2013 for tax fraud) are against immigration, especially Arab and African immigration.

After the victory anticipated by most of the polls, several NGOs and civil associations predict that within the reforms promoted by Meloni, Salvini and Berlusconi, rights and freedoms will be cut back, which will end up affecting mainly LGTBI groups.

Venanzio Postiglione of Corriere della Sera writes that everyone inside Italy is still wondering what "the country of Meloni" will be like, whether it will be open, closed or in-between; and of course, the mirror of its relationship with Europe.

"The League fell and got hurt: more than I thought. The only winner, even here, is Giorgia Meloni, who in the north-east has reached 27.3%, while the Leaguers have remained at 11%, in the land of Zaia and Fedriga," he points out.

Undoubtedly, the most surprising thing is how Brothers of Italy has risen like foam in the preference of voters who in 2018 gave it 4% of the vote & four years later, 26%.

Meloni, who will have to govern with Salvini (a politician with a difficult character due to his inability to reconcile and an open Europhobe), has promised a cascade of palliative measures to help businesses and families to weather the current economic storm, which will not exactly be temporary in Italy, nor in the rest of Europe.

The new prime minister has promised lower taxes, energy aid, subsidies and a tough hand against illegal immigration and, for the time being, has shelved her criticism of the EU, although Salvini's pressure for Italy to leave the euro will not be few.

For the time being, Meloni says they agree to remain in NATO and says he will not change his position on Ukraine, although once again Salvini of the League and Berlusconi of Forza Italia, the party with which he will also have to form a government, are open friends and admirers of Putin.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymir Zelensky, congratulated the Prime Minister on Twitter, a gesture to which Meloni replied via the same channel: "Dear @ZelenskyyUa you know you can count on our loyal support for the cause of freedom of the Ukrainian people. Stay strong and keep your faith!"

This time the tables may turn, leaving behind the "gatopardismo" of the past in a country characterised by political instability, which in 67 years has seen 31 prime ministers.

How long will Meloni last in power? Whatever Salvini wants, in fact, he broke the coalition - in August 2019 - with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), the ultra-leftists who in the elections a year earlier won a historic 32% of the vote and ended up allying with a Salvini who does not hide his desire to be prime minister.

In four years, Italian voters have gone from feeling represented by the ultra-left to now placing their trust in two far-right parties, Meloni and Salvini. Sparks will fly between two such strong egos, each trying to impose their own vision of the ultra or fascist government that will govern the Italians. Although Meloni has been saying that they will be centre-right.

It is true that Italy is trapped in a straitjacket imposed by the EU and if it wants the 200 billion euros it would get from the EU's Recovery and Resilience Fund it will necessarily have to send a budget in line with Brussels' demands.

The Italian economy needs and requires such aid. The vast majority is non-refundable, it will not have to pay it back, but the EU will not release it if Meloni's government first sends a budget detailing what it will do with each euro and takes care of a balance between revenue, spending and debt that has already reached 156% of GDP.

This is an important lifeline at a time when the risk premium threatens to continue rising and its 10-year bonds are trading at 4.3% & the domestic situation is complex and Meloni has promised a cascade of aid, bonuses, rebates and subsidies; for this he needs EU money.

The population of 59.55 million people faces a series of vicissitudes with an unemployment rate of 7.9% in July affecting women the most, with an unemployment rate of 9.2% and inflation at 8.4% in August. GDP rose 1% in the second quarter of the year and could grow marginally by 0.7% by 2023, according to the IMF.

Italy's young people are disenchanted and mired in a problem of precarious unemployment and starvation while the mass of young people who neither study nor work continues to grow.

The gap between the north and the south of the country is an aggravating factor in the understanding of the country, as well as in the progress of its economy, to such an extent that it has been reflected in the election results.

Abstention which, according to data from the Italian Interior Ministry, was 36.1%, a historic figure, was higher in the south because one out of two people did not vote, and in the regions of Calabria (49%), Sardinia (47%) and Campania (47%) it was even higher.

The south, which four years ago gave a landslide victory to Giuseppe Conte's ultra-left 5 Star Movement with 32% of the vote, this time experienced a day of disenchantment and gave this party only 15% of the vote.

By contrast, in the beautiful northern Apennine region of Emilia-Romagna, the turnout was 72%, consolidating Meloni's bubbling rise.

The Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, was eventually shot on 28 April 1945 and his corpse was left to the wrath of the Milanese, who left his body hanging in Piazza Loreto in the city. For many years there was no more talk of fascism until the beast was reawakened in the younger generation.

Meloni's family comes from the working class and slums where they feel displaced by cheap immigrant labour; the different, the different and the outsiders are only threats. Meloni believes that Mussolini was a hero who just loved Italy very much.

The history books say that nobody killed more Italians than Mussolini, what a way to love Italy. The real problem is that the younger generations who decide to resurrect demons ignore history and live an imaginary of a better time that was not so and try to bring it back to the present.

Ultra ideologies, left or right, are permeating because the centre is weakening and abstention and ostracism are contributing to this. Enrico Letta, with his Democratic Party, will be the second force in Italy with 19% of the vote, and he has been affected by the abstention that has grown again and has ended up resigning his post.

For the analyst Lorenzo Marsili of The Guardian, Meloni will not govern like Mussolini but rather in the style of former US president Donald Trump.

"Those who label the Brothers of Italy as fascists miss the point. Meloni's party is not so much the heir of Benito Mussolini's fascist movement as the first European imitator of the American Republican party," according to the political expert.

Whether he is or not, there is no hiding a certain amount of unease among certain sectors of the population. It is not just Italy, in fact the spectre of the far right has been haunting a good part of European governments whose democracies suffer tremendous shocks as the economic and social outlook worsens and voters experience a polarisation that leaves some citizens sceptical enough not to go to the polls and others so angry and irritated that they decide to vote for the worst extremes. When things go wrong, the same demons return.

A few days ago, it was Sweden that shook up the European political spectrum with Jimmie Akesson, 43, as the strong head of the Sweden Democrats virtually bringing the far right into a country that had been under moderate governments over the years. He came second with 20.6% of the vote and is the force that has grown the most, as in Italy with the far-right Meloni.

In mid-September the Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson resigned as prime minister and is awaiting the formation of a new government in a nation polarised by Sweden's stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its entry into NATO along with Finland, which has led to a break with its decades-old neutrality.

Forming a stable government will be difficult, as the opposition bloc has 49.6% of the vote & and the centre-left bloc 49%.

In Sweden, the far right blames globalisation for all the ills of its economy. In Italy, the far-right blames all the ills of its economy on illegal immigration and is also throwing a spanner in the works against the EU and membership of the eurozone with the euro as its common currency.

At the international level, this four-year period has been marked first by the trade-tariff war between the United States and China, then by the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, and then by the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine since 24 February. The persistent imbalance in commodity markets and the difficulties in getting them to international buyers in time are leaving many companies on the brink of closure, workers without jobs and families paying high prices to eat and live. We shall see over time if this wolf howls too....