A day of reckoning for Brussels is at hand as a coalition between Italy’s populist Five Star Movement and the anti-EU, anti-mass migration party, Lega, looks to be on the cards.
Italy’s ruling centre left coalition suffered a spectacular backlash from the Italian public in the country’s March 4th General Election leaving the centre right and right with the significant majority of parliamentary seats, but with no one party with enough to form a government.
Now it appears after weeks of wrangling it looks like Italy may at last have a government. The success of the two right-wing, populist parties has been put down to a failing economy as well as a migration crisis that has rocked Italy.
The tens of thousands of migrants entering Italy from across the Mediterranean from war-town Libya has led to a nightmare for ordinary Italians. Nigerian crime gangs now stalk Italian streets and threat of Islamic terrorism is ever present.
The murder, dismemberment and ritual cannibalizing of an 18-year-old Italian girl by Nigerian mobsters and the rape of a two-year-old Italian boy by two Pakistani men at a train station has seen another rise in support for anti-establishment parties.
Both parties are noted for their Eurosceptic outlook and both have party’s leaders have praised Donald Trump and his “America First” approach to leadership.