Italy is Europe’s third-largest economy and one of its poorer ones. That is the opening Elly Schlein, the 41-year-old opposition leader, intends to use against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni before national elections that must take place by the end of 2027.
The argument, as laid out in a New Republic profile, starts with exports. Wine, pasta, olive oil and designer fashion all rely on the United States as their biggest market. Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war have hit them hard, and producers face a plain choice: earn less on each item or raise prices. The larger exposure is energy. Most of Italy’s imported gas passes through the Strait of Hormuz, and the economy leans heavily on those imports.
Schlein puts it more bluntly. “After four years of Meloni, our growth rate is at zero,” she said. “It’s the image of the complete failure of the economic and social policies of a right-wing nationalist government.”
Where the money goes
The profile lists Meloni’s pro-market record: wider privatization of a health system already among the weakest on the continent, privatization of higher education, a bigger casual workforce. Job prospects for young Italians are slim, the writer notes, and so are incentives for women to work.
Schlein singles out the migrant detention centers in Albania. Meloni’s government said they would host 36,000 asylum-seekers a year. After European courts ruled that Italy could not wholly turn away asylum-seekers, Schlein says, the government moved migrants already in detention to Albania “instead of declaring failure”. She cites data from the Italian president’s office showing “not 36,000 a year, but 536 migrants in two years”. Because those detainees cannot be sent home directly from Albania, she says, Italy must pay to bring them over and then deport them. “With taxpayer money for her propaganda, she prolongs the suffering.”
Defense is the other bill. Trump has demanded that NATO allies spend 5 percent of gross domestic product on the military. Schlein says Meloni gave in, and that the target “will be the end of the economy and welfare of this country.” She would have followed Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, who pledged loyalty to the alliance and its capacity goals without bowing to Trump.
Her own plan has five priorities: health, education, decent jobs, industrial policy, and the digital and ecological transitions, with the gains from renewable energy spread around. On AI she asks what France, Italy, Spain or Germany can do alone against “500 billion investment on AI in the U.S. and 500 billion investment from China”. Her answer is a European research center.
The political catch
Money alone will not carry her. Her party has not won a national election since 2016, and Professor Marc Lazar of Rome’s Luiss University says its core backers are an intellectual elite in big cities that struggles to reach small-town and rural voters. In late May’s municipal elections the right won in Venice and Reggio Calabria. In March, though, Meloni lost her referendum on the judiciary, with young turnout at 67 percent.
Schlein also has to hold together a coalition of smaller parties that disagree on foreign policy and defense spending.
