The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, has over the past months opened a series of lines of attack against Germany’s leadership of the Union and the Brussels establishment. Beginning last December in an interview with the FT, Prime Minister Renzi attacked the Brussels consensus on economic policy, saying that they were fanning the flames of populism, and damaging governments across the EU. Now, almost 2 months later, what seemed to be an outburst of protest has turned into an attack particularly on Germany’s dominance of the Union, and the political and economic choices that go with it.

The Italian Prime Minister began his attack on the EU with criticism of German-led austerity policies, or Sparpolitik, in December. Having made his criticism in the wake of the Spanish election which saw Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right government lose its majority, PM Renzi said “I know that those who have been in the front line of being the faithful allies of the politics of rigour without growth have lost their jobs”, referring also to the Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. In January 2015 , the previously faithful ally of eurozone economics, Greece, saw a turn against German Sparpolitik under Alexis Tsipras’ SYRIZA party. The Prime Minister had also criticised the nord-stream pipeline, which would see a gas pipeline be built between Germany an Russia (considering that the ‘south-stream’ project involving Italy was cancelled by the EU), as well as the failure of the EU to implement a common bank deposit insurance scheme. Italy has been criticised by Brussels over its 2016 budget, and its lack of zeal in fingerprinting refugees and migrants entering the Union via the central mediterranean. On these clashes, PM Renzi brought the subject back to Germany saying “But we have to be frank … Europe has to serve all 28 countries, not just one”. It was in the FT interview that PM Renzi stated the problem of following rules; he conceded that Italy was a little lax on keeping to them in the past, but now this has changed, and he wants to make sure everyone else sticks to them as well. On the topic of the nord/south-stream debate, migration fingerprinting and banking, the PM criticised the German situation in comparison to Italy’s.

Criticisms of the EU and Germany continued in the new year. Italy blocked the proposed transfer of €3bn to Turkey, because it was not clear what the money was going to be used on. He later allowed the funds to be transferred, but made another complaint about the Commission being unwilling to deduct the cost of Italian efforts to save migrants in the Mediterranean from the Italian budget calculations, determining whether it meets EU budget rules. This is in contrast to the money being given to Turkey by member-states; the Prime Minister said on the distinction “only bureaucratic perversion can make distinctions between lives to save”.  A POLITICO article in January reported that PM Renzi was sharpening his attacks on the Brussels consensus, saying “We all know that the political and cultural orthodoxy that has monopolized thinking on how Europe should be run for the last decade isn’t working.” In another FT article reporting on a speech given by the Prime Minister to the Humboldt University in Berlin, he said that we risked wasting the benefits of the European project by handing it over to the bureaucrats and technocrats. The FT described PM Renzi’s statements on Brussels as “increasingly bitter recriminations”, and explained them away as the result of a shift in Italian opinion towards the EU. Both Lega Nord (LN) and Movimento 5 Stella (m5S) have seen increased support in the polls, which could provide one explanation for a tougher stance on Europe.

This kind of dismissive rhetoric of the Italian Prime Minister was also repeated in an FAZ commentary from the end of last month. The article explains that since Renzi’s government has built up political capital for Italy over the past few years, Renzi has now seen himself in a position to demand and end to what he sees as the Paris-Berlin axis which dominates EU policy, and include Rome among Europe’s most important capitals. It also speaks in a demeaning tone about the ‘respect’ that Italy ‘believes it has earned’. Then the piece shifts into outright criticism, arguing that Italy has an eye on the nigger picture, as does Chancellor Merkel, and therefore in this time of crisis, Italy should not go and begin causing trouble now. Instead, according to the FAZ, the Prime Minister should stick to his own obligations, on when it comes to EU budget rules, and EU border protection, criticising Italy’s performance on both (it went something along the lines of “which always actually means ‘protection'”). The article went on that “the time for shenanigans is over”, referring supposedly to the Prime Minister’s valid criticism of the Brussels-Berlin regime. The final thrust of the article was that this is not the time for criticism – shut up, and we’ll all be fine.

A sea-change is required

However, the tenacious Italian PM was not going to leave it there. In a letter to La Repubblica, Mr Renzi responded to the claim by Jens Weidmann (President of the Bundesbank) and François Villeroy de Galhau (Governor of the Banque de France) that the eurozone needed a ‘super finance minister’ to truly oversee the economic policy of the monetary union. This was supported by the Italian Finance Minister, Pier Carlo Padoan, however Mr Weidmann later expressed his belief that such a scheme would not work. Mr Renzi also made this point in his letter to La Repubblica, saying that it was not about having a ‘super finance minister’, but instead a policy-shift, desperately needed in order to change the state of the union. Again he underlined his main points that Brussels has taken the wrong path in impressing austerity measures across the Union, the US is in a far better place 8 years after the Financial Crisis, as opposed to Europe, a reward for focussing on economic growth, investment and innovation rather than spending rigour, and that European countries which have seen growth have not strictly stuck to the EU’s budget rules (he provides the Britain and Spain as examples). Again the PM attacked Germany, saying that unlike Italy, Germany does not stick to the rules – is has not fingerprinted any of the migrants that have entered the country since the Chancellor opened the borders last year, and it persistently runs a trade surplus above that stipulated in EU guidelines. In the letter Mr Renzi said “we should probably define clearly the economic politics that we intend to follow. Because austerity, alone, can be a killer.”

What’s Mr Renzi really doing?

“When some of us in Brussels ask that more attention gets focused on social issues, growth, bureaucratic simplification, they are not being critical for the sake of it.” This line sums up the aim of the Italian Prime Minister, I think. Yes, there is talk of how the PM will need to be more confrontational towards Brussels if he wants to fend of the threats fro LN and M5S, however he explicitly criticises both movements for their anti-EU rhetoric in his letter to La Repubblica. No, what I think is that the Prime Minister, for the first time in years, wants to challenge the consensus in Brussels, and shift Europe away from the neoliberal economics that it has been religiously wedded to since 2010, peddled by the CDU and Chancellor Merkel. With Britain teetering on the brink of leaving the Union, and France still heavily focused on its internal problems, its about time another national leader in Europe stood up to lead, and stopped Germany from running roughshod over the Union’s core principle of solidarity.

The Prime Minister is in a decent position to wage his fight against the established consensus in Brussels; his party, the Partito Demoratico’s (PD) European sister the Party of European Socialists (PES) account for the second largest faction in the European Parliament, after Merkel’s EPP. Italy’s move to attack the German imposed consensus would garner her allies across the continent, and it is Southern European, which makes it quite a spectacle in a traditionally Northern-dominated Europe. Perhaps the time of referring to the ‘PIIGS’ is over. It is a shame it has taken Italy this long to stand up against the German hegemon. It was pointed out by Yanis Varoufakis and others that Italy quietly acquiesced to the Germany’s stance on Greece in the summer of 2015 – the ‘crushing of the Athens Spring’ he might call it. Regardless, he was sceptical earlier, as was I, as to whether this challenge by Italy was legitimate. Considering it has lasted for longer than it thought, I am steadily being convinced that this could be a genuine challenge – sorely needed in European democracy. Matteo Renzi’s consistent attacks on the Brussels-Berlin axis – which he believes includes Paris – have demonstrated an intention to truly shake up the Union, and press Brussels to change gear. On the topic of France, regardless of what Renzi thinks, President Hollande might be at the top table but he’s not in the driving seat – that belongs squarely to the German Chancellor. It is precisely because of France’s lack of assertiveness in European policy – cultural, political and economic – that we have been left with Germany alone running the show.

There are several reasons for mounting an offensive now; Germany’s internal political division, the fall of 4 Sparpolitik/EPP regimes last year, and thus the loss of Merkel’s allies in the Parliament and the Council, have meant that the Chancellor’s Europe has come under significant strain. Portugal, Poland, Greece, and potentially Spain and Ireland, have set up governments all with no love for German neoliberal economics. On the other side, the Italian Prime Minister has the potential for support. The British press has been reporting that Mr Renzi’s stance has made him an unlikely ally of David Cameron on EU reform. We have to get one thing straight though – this means 2 entirely different things to the two Prime Ministers. Renzi was talking about a ‘social Europe’ – and an end to Sparpolitik. British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has also made it clear he intends to campaign for a more social Europe in the coming British referendum.

Perhaps the time for internal divisions is not now, as the FAZ said in January, however with mounting pressure on all sides, I think presenting the clear choice of continuing with the neoliberal consensus, or shifting to a more solidarity-based, interventionist and growth-orientated economic policy (and perhaps more), could prove to have positive outcomes. Ultimately, the time for debate is when the problem is so strongly felt, not when everyone’s emotions over the subject have faded and they’ve forgotten its significance. Regardless of if this is what the Prime Minister is really doing, it’s important to remember that challenging the consensus is at the very heart of the democratic process, and has been too long absent from European politics.

Sources: POLITICO, FT, FAZ, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, La Repubblica