Italy: the legislature faces its final phase with a number of unresolved issues
- Electoral strongholds in a divided country
- The economic erosion of the executive
- An economic model that is losing competitiveness
The holding of up to seven regional government elections (Aosta Valley and Veneto in the north, Tuscany and Marche in the centre-north and centre-south, and Calabria and Puglia in the south) has not clarified the direction the legislature is taking: will the centre-right repeat its victory? Will the centre-left be able to win, even if only by a narrow margin? Or will the centre-right lose a substantial number of MPs but continue to govern for another term, breaking with the traditional alternation between centre-right and centre-left that has been in place since 1994?
In reality, what these elections as a whole have confirmed is that there are genuine strongholds that remain faithful to their ideological stance: it is as much a pipe dream for the centre-left to win in Lombardy or Veneto as it is for the centre-right to do so in Campania or Puglia. While the centre-right candidate swept the centre-left candidate in Veneto, in Puglia the centre-left did the same to the centre-right leader (Antonio Decaro of the PD won 70% of the vote).
Electoral strongholds in a divided country
Each of the coalitions has to face its own dilemmas. In the case of Ely Schlein, in principle the ‘frontrunner’ for the 2027 elections, she has to watch poll after poll showing that her rival Meloni has 50% more support than the Bolognese lawyer and politician. But Meloni also has her own dilemmas to face: she has carried out judicial reform and, like her much-maligned predecessor Matteo Renzi, she will have to face the verdict of the polls in the spring of 2026.
Meloni knows that the judicial reform will probably receive more votes in favour than against, but she may not achieve the necessary quorum (50% turnout), which would invalidate the referendum and weaken Meloni's position.
It is particularly difficult to achieve this quorum when the centre-left will do everything possible to discourage people from voting and when what is essentially being offered in this reform is to separate the judicial career from the prosecutorial career, something that does not even affect 1% of members of the judiciary. At a time when there is less and less participation in elections, how will Prime Minister Meloni manage to get more than 50% of her fellow citizens to vote on such a minor reform?
In addition, as happened in December 2016 with Renzi (who had a large parliamentary majority), the other parties see these plebiscites as a unique opportunity to remove those in power (Renzi had no choice but to resign even though the legislature still had a year and a half to run).
In the case of the centre-left, they have learned from their mistake in September 2022, in the sense that, with a law (the ‘Rosattellum bis’) that favoured coalitions over parties running alone: in their case, a leaderless centre-left ran in the elections with PD and AVS on the one hand; with the Five Star Movement on the other; and, finally, with the ‘Terzo Polo’ (the sum of Renzi's Italia Viva and Calenda's Azione).
Opposing them was a perfectly assembled centre-right coalition with Forza Italia, Brothers of Italy and the League (with the small addition of ‘Noi moderati’, a party that did not even ask for a minister in the new executive). The result: in the Senate, 120 seats for the centre-right and 80 for the centre-left.
The economic erosion of the executive
And Meloni, who was unchallenged in her accession to the presidency of the Council of Ministers because, while she had obtained 24% of the votes, both Forza Italia and Lega, in both cases, did not even reach 9% of the votes. Furthermore, over time, Meloni, the first woman to preside over the Council of Ministers in the 79-year history of the Italian Republic, has gained support to reach around 29-30% of voters nationwide.
Of course, both the centre-left and centre-right have significant problems to face. The Meloni government's macroeconomic data is very poor: in terms of GDP, Mario Draghi left the presidency of the Council of Ministers (where he was succeeded by Meloni on 22 October 2022) with growth of 4.8%. The following year, Meloni's first full year as prime minister, GDP growth fell to just 1%; in 2024, the figure was even worse, standing at 0.7%.
And 2025 has been even worse: after +0.3% in the first quarter, it fell to -0.1% in the second quarter; and in the third quarter, growth was 0%. In other words, this means that by a single tenth of a percentage point (the negative figure missing in the third quarter), Meloni's government has not technically entered into recession, which is when there are two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
At the same time, debt has increased: when Draghi stepped down as prime minister, each Italian owed almost 47,000 euros, but that figure now stands at over 52,000 euros. And, on top of all this, the country continues to age and lose talent, as every year some 180,000 people leave to work in other countries, countries where they will earn better pay overall.
In reality, Meloni's problem is the same as that faced by Merz, Macron and Sánchez. Priority is given to spending on pensions and public sector staff over investment in new industries: this guarantees the government a very high number of votes, but the truth is that the respective economies are becoming less and less competitive.
An economic model that is losing competitiveness
The current government has managed to bring the risk premium to a level not seen in decades, which is 70-75 basis points, but that does not mean that economic activity is booming: what this data really means is that the government has complete control over public accounts (in line with the European Commission's most orthodox approach), but that means not investing in the future. All it does is ensure the reliability of the payments that the state must make.
And in an increasingly globalised world, with numerous emerging and very buoyant economies, the reality is that Italy runs the risk of ending up leaving the G-7 (the seven most industrialised countries in the world) and moving to the G-20 (which, incidentally, includes Spain) in a matter of a few years.
In any case, Meloni continues to enjoy the advantage of having no rival on the centre-left: Schlein has no pull, and the polls say so. Of course, if the centre-left wants to stand up to Meloni, it has a first-rate candidate: Antonio Decaro, former mayor of Bari, national parliamentarian and MEP, and newly elected governor of the Puglia region. But to do so, the PD would have to do what it did for the 2013 and 2018 elections and, conversely, did not do for the 2022 elections: hold primaries to designate the candidate to lead the centre-left.
Because it is one thing to be secretary-general and another to be the head of the ticket in an election: that is what Bersani did, for example, in 2009 (elected secretary-general of the PD) and in 2012 (designated PD candidate for the general or 'political' elections). Or Renzi in 2017 for the 2028 elections, although in his case, being secretary general was considered reason enough to be the ‘head of the ticket’ in the elections.
There is still time to see what happens (the elections will probably take place in March or April 2027, before the French presidential elections), but the reality is that the elections held in recent months have done little to clarify the future. Meloni remains the most popular leader in the country and Schlein continues to trail behind. Will anyone on the centre-left dare to make a bold move? Today, it does not seem likely, but it could happen.