In Italy, the reform élan is threatening to flag, the first parties are already campaigning – and Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s quasi-messianic aura seems to have fizzled out in just his second year in office. Are there new elections now?
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Oliver Meiler, Rome
Every day a targeted taunt, a polemic, a mini scandal. Italy’s political establishment has acquired a degree of mastery over the decades at the slow attrition of governments, often from within. Now Mario Draghi, the non-party prime minister, has also fallen into the crippling grip of the parties in his government of national unity. They have already switched to campaign mode for the 2023 parliamentary elections, each with its own agenda – on the war in Ukraine, on taxes, on the new competition law, on the judiciary, on pensions.