Responses of European economic cultures to Europe's crisis politics : the example of German-Italian discrepancies

Abstract

When we started our preparation for this project only a year ago, our prime concerns were the deepening of the social and economic asymmetries between the North and the South under the impact of the financial crisis, with Germany and Italy providing an example of existential importance for the EU as a whole. Both of us had resided in the two countries for prolonged periods in the past, and we had never witnessed such a surge in antagonistic feelings on both sides of the Alps as occurred during the Euro crisis. This can even be measured: while it had been common in Germany, at the beginning of the crisis, to talk about the PIIGS states (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain), with Italy figuring among them as an important member, the percentage of Italians having a positive image of Germany crashed only from 75 to 65 per cent during the immediate crisis period, and now the majority of the Italians thinks that Germany has too much influence in Europe and that it uses this influence at the expense of Southern Member States. While our application for funding was still pending, we witnessed two crucial events that increased the pertinence of our project way beyond our expectations. First, on the 24 September 2017, for the first time in post-war German history, a far right party entered the German Bundestag with a landslide victory, receiving 14 per cent of the popular vote and 100 parliamentary seats. Second, only five months later in Italy, the far-right Lega party and the Movimento Cinque Stelle emerged as the big winners from the Italian federal elections of the 4th of March 2018. Forming a previously unthinkable coalition between right-wing and left-wing populism, they entered into government. We are not so naïve as to believe that the variety of Europe’s crises could be understood and adequately analysed as though these were isolated events. The course of Italy’s economic and social policy has so obviously been affected by the migration burdens that Italy has had to shoulder and the lack of European solidarity; the bitter disappointment could be turned into populist critique of the constraints that European rule imposes upon national policies and the public announcement of disobedience by members of the Italian government. In a similar vein, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany had been founded as an anti-Euro rescue party, which catalysed quickly through the immigration crisis of 2015 into a xenophobic far-right populist party, sharing many positions with the Italian Lega. While the parties and alliances in both countries had capitalised very much upon the antagonisms between Italy and Germany and their positions during the Euro crisis by building on nationalist sentiments, today we have reached a true anti-climax when one observes that the intensification of tensions are accompanied by the founding of new alliances and a contagion towards formerly non-populist and non-far right parties in both countries: “Europe does not want migrants, it wants our money” (Luigi Di Maio); “Migration is the Mother of all problems” (Horst Seehofer). Both the AfD in Germany and the Lega in Italy share two major targets against which they direct their rage: European integration, especially in the economic realm, and immigration. We refrain, however, from attempting to disentangle all these interdependencies, but hope that our study of the two exemplary cases of Italy and Germany will provide us with some answers to the question of what led us down this road. We believe that the approach which we have pursued in our design of this project provides illuminating insights of lasting importance.