Italy could soon get a hard-right government

IN FEBRUARY WE and many others breathed a sigh of relief after Mario Draghi agreed to become prime minister of Italy. For had not “super Mario” saved the euro, in 2012, with his promise that he, and the European Central Bank he then headed, would do “whatever it takes” to stop the project unravelling? Those three words were enough to calm markets, bringing down interest rates on the debt of the zone’s weaker members. Over the nine years since then, those countries have saved tens of billions of euros thanks to reduced borrowing costs.

With Mr Draghi at the helm, the yield on Italian debt is currently only around 1.2 percentage points above that of Germany. The government he leads can count on a large majority of seats in parliament, and the European Commission is about to start releasing a whopping €200bn ($245bn) or so in covid-19 recovery funds, to be paid out over the next three to four years. That sum is equivalent to 12% of Italy’s annual GDP, a tidy stimulus by anyone’s standards but Joe Biden’s. The commission has been broadly satisfied by the promises Mr Draghi has made about how he will spend the money, and the reforms to Italy’s sclerotic government that he will aim to undertake. So far, then, so good.