In a rudderless Europe, Italy has its moment

ROME — The European Union’s biggest economies are in turmoil. France’s government fell last week. Germany is facing a snap election after a fragile coalition collapsed. Financial markets are nervous, and EU authorities are worried.

Amid the chaos, an unlikely haven of relative tranquility has emerged in a country that was long considered among Europe’s most ungovernable: Italy.

The government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proved durable and stable, and the Italian economy has shown relative resilience. Many in Italy feel that Europe’s political tables have turned.

“Welcome to Italian chaos!” Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister of Italy, said in an interview.

“After being mocked for years for the instability of our governments,” he added, “we exported not only Parmesan, pasta and wine but also instability and coalition problems.”

It seems to be a propitious moment for Meloni, who has the political winds at her back as kindred right-wing forces gain momentum in other major countries in Europe, and now also in the United States with the election of Donald Trump.

At a time of uncertainty in France and Germany, Meloni’s supporters hope that the combination of circumstances could bolster her position, and Italy’s, on the international stage.

“It’s a reversed trend,” said Lucio Malan, an Italian senator and the head of Meloni’s grouping in Italy’s senate. “We have got stability, and this allows Italy to matter more.”

In Europe, Meloni has worked to dispel fears about her Brothers of Italy party’s post-fascist roots by aligning with her European partners on key issues such as support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. She has made herself a bridge between the political mainstream and the far right. Politico crowned her Europe’s most powerful person for 2025.

Her supporters anticipate that she might now play a similar role in mediating tensions between Europe and Trump, who has threatened a trade war and to pull U.S. backing for NATO and for Ukraine.

Meloni met with Trump and Elon Musk in Paris on Saturday, after the reopening ceremony of Notre Dame cathedral.

Still, some political analysts are skeptical that Italy’s stability will translate into a larger leadership role in Europe. Meloni, they said, has not articulated a vision for Europe like other leaders, such as President Emmanuel Macron of France, have done.

Her strategy, they note, has been more defensive, about extracting resources from Brussels and protecting Italy’s interests and borders rather than about finding Pan-European solutions to common challenges. Some are not sure she even wants to.

“Italy is no longer a problem,” acknowledged Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy. But, he added, “No one’s looking to Italy for a vision on the future of Europe.”

Nonetheless, the situation is a highly unusual reversal of Europe’s traditional political patterns.

In Germany, political stability was long the norm. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel held power for 16 years; Italy changed 10 governments during that time. But Germany has now fallen victim to the same political fragmentation that has roiled much of the Continent, driven by the emergence of hard-right factions.

In France, the nationalist party led by Marine Le Pen last week helped topple the shortest-lived government in the country’s modern history. That has brought a political impasse in Paris and a wait for a record fourth government in a year.

Italy, plagued by unstable coalitions, was long seen as Europe’s troublesome teenage child trying to leech off the family credit card. All of a sudden, it is less of a headache. Its government, in place for just over two years, is among the longest-lasting in the country’s history.

For decades, partly because of an electoral system that empowers small parties, government crises in Italy were so frequent that they were almost nonevents. The problem seemed so insurmountable that Renzi proposed a referendum to alter the constitution, hoping to bring more stability. He resigned after a crushing defeat.

Meloni has also promised a constitutional change that would entail direct election of the head of government. But for now, the coalition is holding up, even without a legislative overhaul.

“It’s a government that showed that Italy is capable of having governments that last for longer than a year and a half,” said Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, an Italian former ambassador to Washington and a senator with Meloni’s party.

Meloni, who began her term in 2022, also relies on coalition partners. Her party has teamed up with the center-right Forza Italia founded by Silvio Berlusconi and with the anti-immigration League.

Despite their ideological differences, the parties seem, at least for now, to be sticking together. Meloni’s party earned nearly 30% of the vote at this year’s elections for the European Parliament, while her coalition parties each received about 9%.

Italy’s economy, still plagued by a suffocating national debt, is growing, albeit slowly, helped by billions in EU recovery funds. Unemployment has dropped, and Meloni’s government has been cautious with spending, proposing rigorous budgets.

Lawmakers with Meloni’s party say that the stability has helped attract investments. In October, Microsoft announced its largest investment in Italy to date, and Amazon Web Services has announced plans to spend about $1.2 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure there.

Supporters say that Meloni has also become an influential figure on immigration, having played a significant role in helping the European Union make deals with Tunisia and Egypt to halt migrant departures.

Meloni has let go of her vitriol against the bloc, but she remains a nationalist who has repeatedly stated that her job in Brussels is to promote Italy’s interests.

At a time when the union faces major challenges on security, defense and competitiveness, Meloni has kept her focus on Italy’s role, experts say, rather than charting a broad vision for Europe.

That approach, analysts added, means that the trouble in France and Germany, rather than presenting an opportunity for Meloni, could instead empower other EU leaders, such as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, or even Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who was president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.

“Everyone in Europe is happy that Meloni is swimming in the middle of the pack,” Rahman noted. “She is playing the game,” he said, “but I don’t think she is playing the same game.”

“It’s a lot more about Italy and a lot less about Europe,” he added.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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