Silvio Berlusconi boasts of resuming his friendship with Vladimir Putin. According to the former Italian prime minister, the Russian president told him 20 bottles of vodka for his 86th birthday and sent him a “very kind letter.” He responded by sending a can of Italian lambrusco wine. It is known from some leaked audio recordings that Berlusconi also blamed Ukrainian leader Volodímir Zelenski. He says that he himself caused the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a politician with a controversial record and followed by dozens of lawsuits for corruption or underage prostitution, this stance is hardly surprising. However, his closeness to the Russian leader, with whom he was already in good relations during his prime ministerial years, became a serious problem for the formation of a ruler in Italy. After listening to the voices, the new prime minister Giorgia Meloni issued an ultimatum to his two partners Matteo Salvini (Putin’s fan) and Silvio Berlusconi himself: he will only form a tripartite government (Sisters of Italy, Liga and Forza Italia) your ministers openly support the European position and NATO will help Kiev. They both swallowed the frog and came to an agreement. Meloni was commissioned by the Italian president to form an Administrator. But the issue promises to be a source of stress for the coalition in a country accustomed to unstable governments that fall every year and a half. And an obstacle to the unity displayed by the European partners in the face of Russia’s challenge.
“England”
Instability in the eurozone’s third-largest economy was overshadowed by former EU partner Britain this week. The resignation of Liz Truss, the third British prime minister in five years, has frightened European foreign ministers, who are in full-blown conflict with Russia. London is the European country that provides the most financial and military aid to Ukraine. But above all, a primary financial capital in a cloud-filled global economic moment that threatens to drain the working classes of the old continent.
Truss resigned just hours after he said he would not resign this Thursday, saying he was “a fighter and not a quitter”. Just 45 days of government and two Ministers of Economy to change an impulsive and poorly explained decision: a drastic reduction in taxes for all incomes high and low, without cutting any expenses. “We were trying to get growth, but maybe we didn’t explain it well,” British ambassador Hugh Elliott told this newspaper a week ago.
Truss bought an argument that has already proven wrong: that a tax cut protects and even increases income. american president Ronald Reagan triedwas supported by an academic study (the Laffer curve) that was shown to be false: incomes fell and the public deficit recurred. Markets feared that the UK would fall into the same trap forty years from now.
Sterling fell, stock markets trembled, he fired the ideological minister of macro tax cuts and put another minister going in the diametrically opposite direction. But it was late and the pressure was unbearable. Now the world’s sixth largest economy and population of 67 million await the next installment in the political series (Boris Johnson’s covid parties, the still-unhealed wound in the European Union, the skirmishes in Parliament). Conservative Party refuses to call electionsand in the UK, presumably, there will be a prime minister who is once again not elected by the majority and will have to deal with an increasingly tense situation on the street as in other countries: the economic trap of high prices and low growth. Stagflation ghost.
“It is the price of energy resources (oil, gas, electricity) and inflation (linked to the above, but also food) that affects us ordinary Europeans. Added to this is an aggravating factor, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, or rather between Russia and Europe and the West,” comments EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group, Frederic Mertens of WilmarsProfessor of international relations at the European University of Valencia. “But it must be said that all these factors existed before the conflict in Ukraine, a war that many governments used to justify raising prices, freezing wages or delaying retirement age in France.”
If the British and Italian political crises are clear (“Welcome to England”British magazine ‘The Economist’ wrote with a photo of Truss with pizza and spaghetti: a country succumbing to political instability, low growth and bond markets”, the French more underground but no less important.
France
Emmanuel Macron had to force approval of the 2023 budgets, bypassing the National Assembly, where he did not have an absolute majority, which exposed the Executive to a motion of no confidence. In the streets, when we’re face to face close range strikes and fight scenes in (specific) Paris to fill the gas tank that some have extravagantly associated with the post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie, and for others it more accurately brought back memories of the oil crisis of the 1970s. What was then an oil embargo on oil-producing countries as punishment for those who supported Israel in the Yon Kippur War, which ended with scenes of rationing and long queues at gas stations in the US, is now almost a gas embargo from Russia. Sanctions on the Kremlin regime.
There are more countries that are part of this “ugly world situation”, in the words of a German MP to this newspaper. For example, Wilmarsdice’s Mertens says that “it is an earthquake for many people” as Sweden has the extremes of being the second most voted party and a social democracy country that conditions the government.
All this creates joy in the Kremlin. “Goodbye Liz Truss, hello lettuce”Talkative former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Twitter following the conservative politician’s resignation. “Speaking of the collapse of the West has been part of the Kremlin’s long-standing argument,” he explains to this newspaper. Carmen Kolomina, principal investigator at CIDOB. “The Medvedev case is another example. But I don’t think the instability in Europe is really a good change for them.”
Currently, only two of the former continent’s major countries, Spain and Germany, currently have stable governments, both of which are coalition governments. Madrid and Berlin experience something akin to a diplomatic romance reflected in bilateral summits and messages of mutual support.
Colomina points out that it’s not just the tensions in Italy or the Kingdom, or the protests in France or Germany (where the far-right Alternative for Germany party is mobilizing in the streets). In Brussels, there have been disagreements about reducing energy costs that have emerged in recent months. “Global growth is slowing On the other hand, political uncertainty is increasing: how cold the winter will be will depend on the management of this autumn,” he concludes.