Italy is once again the centre of the coronavirus in Europe

Last October brought very bad news for the European Union's third largest economy: the coronavirus is once again advancing relentlessly, as it did in the second half of February of this year. With the added bonus that the so-called "health emergency" (which was well dealt with by the current government when it was the first "wave") is now being combined with the "economic emergency", making it much more complicated for leaders at any level to take decisions and assume responsibility for them. The fact is that the country continues to suffer from the permanent anomaly it has been experiencing since the March 2018 general elections: on the one hand, a fairly heterogeneous government coalition ranging from the purest left represented by LeU to the centre that defends Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva, and a PD that is attempting to act as a link in view of the fact that the most important party in this coalition (Five Stars) is a formation in an advanced state of decomposition (fifty MPs between the two houses have already left for other groups). Furthermore, fifteen of the country's twenty regions (including the two most important, Lombardy and Veneto) are currently governed by the centre-right.

This double reality is particularly evident when the central government has to take drastic measures to stop the advance of the epidemic. It should be remembered that the current Prime Minister (Conte) came to the presidency of the Council of Ministers with the support of a party (the Five Stars Movement) that does not govern a single region, since the five areas not controlled by the centre-right are led by the centre-left (with a clear majority by the Democratic Party). So it is Nicola Zingaretti, leader of the PD, and not Conte, who has the ability to impose himself, if necessary, on the governors of Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany or Puglia, because they all belong to the party he has led since March 2019. But Zingaretti is not even a member of the government, despite the fact that many voices within his party are calling on President Mattarella to change the government (popularly known as "rimpasto") so that at least one representative of the PD is deputy prime minister, which is not the case now. But they have met with the stiff opposition of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who, curiously enough, is precisely from the PD but keeps Conte, whose second consecutive government is now close to 500 days old, at bay.

The problem for those who question Conte as Prime Minister is that they are very clear that there is no alternative to him, at least within the coalition. The only one within the coalition who knows what it is like to preside over a Council of Ministers (Matteo Renzi, "premier" between 2014 and 2016), would never have the support of his coalition partners and furthermore is at very low levels of popularity: his party is decisive in sustaining the government coalition, but not in imposing Renzi as head of government. Zingaretti, in turn, is as grey as his party is weak in the coalition as a whole: let us remember, in this respect, that the PD, despite saving face in the last September elections, is bled dry by the splits to the right and left (the former by LeU and the latter by Renzi a little over a year ago). And the strongest member of the coalition (Five Stars, despite the aforementioned constant loss of members of parliament), having redeemed its leader from March 2018 to the end of January 2020 (Di Maio), although it will now elect a new "head of the bill" in little more than a week (he will probably emerge from the ministers who are in the current executive, though he can always spring a surprise), has no one of substance to take over from Conte, even though he has been separated from this peculiar political formation for some time.

The question is how much longer Mattarella will be able to sustain Conte. The economic forecasts for the moment are better than initially expected, as the EU authorities believe that the country's GDP will contract by 9.9%, compared to 12.4% in neighbouring Spain. But the growth figures for coronavirus positives are simply shocking. Indeed, on 1 October 2,548 positive cases were reported; only a week later (7 October) the figure had risen to 3,678; on 11 October it was already over 5,000 (5,456 to be precise); and on 18 October it finally reached five digits, with 11,705 new cases of coronavirus reported. When the figure reached 414,241 positives since the beginning of the epidemic, the government had to take forceful measures, as more than 100,000 cases had been added in less than three weeks. This meant a new "lockdown", not as harsh as the one in February-May that year, but sufficiently slow for productive activity to suffer.  

Furthermore, this reality heightened the differences within the coalition: PD, LeU and Italia Viva, with Matteo Renzi leading the demand, were already demanding a "yes" to the MES ( supported by a few centre-right governors as opposed to the opposite view of their leader, Matteo Salvini), as the so-called "state-saving mechanism" would entail an automatic injection of over 35 billion in exchange for greater control of public finances by lenders (mainly German and French banks). But Conte, assuming the position of the party that made him prime minister (Five Stars), quickly cut short the debate, claiming that this was not the "panacea" that could cure the country's ills. However, the response of both Renzi and Zingaretti (despite the differences between these two) is that this fund would mean having many more resources to combat the consequences of the coronavirus, starting with greater resources for the healthcare sector.

Conte will surely have no choice but to give his arm in the air, as the data only got worse. On October 27 there were 21,994 positives recorded; on November 1 the figure was 30,000 (29,907 to be precise); and finally, throughout the first week of November the figure was well over 35,000, with more than 39,000 new positives detected in a single day. By region, Lombardy was once again the most affected, with nearly 8,000 cases; but now it is not Veneto or Emilia-Romagna that follow, but Piedmont and Campania. The reality of the latter is particularly serious: not only because it is by far the most important in southern Italy, but also because, like all the surrounding regions (Basilicata, Calabria, Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily), there is a very important underground economy that cannot survive with reduced opening hours and restrictions on the freedom of movement of people. For this reason, Naples, the capital of Campania, has seen a number of major street clashes.

Thus, the country has been divided into three types of regions: the "red" ones, which are considered to be in a "type 4 scenario" that leads them to border the complete closure; the oranges, which correspond to those of "type 3 scenario"; and the "greens", in which the same measures are adopted as in the whole country. Two fundamental parameters are taken into account in this respect: the high number of infections (the case of Lombardy, which has led its governor, Attilio Fontana, and the leader of the Lega, Matteo Salvini, to shout at the top of their voices), or the low health care provision with which to deal with cases of infection (which is the case in Calabria, governed by the centre-right, or in Puglia, in the hands of the centre-left). But the reality is stubborn: in less than six weeks the country has registered more than 600,000 new positive cases, which means that for the time being the executive cannot open its hand to the seriousness of the situation. After a more than placid summer, the country has once again placed itself in the eye of the hurricane.

Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is a researcher at the "Civismo" Foundation and author of the book Italia, 2013-2018. Del caos a la esperanza (Madrid, Liber Factory, 2018).