Italians Vote in Election that May Overturn EU Order

Italians are voting Sunday in an election which could change the face of the European Union, with a right-populist coalition of anti-mass migration, eurosceptic parties tipped to win a parliamentary majority.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega), and three-time former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italy are tipped by pollsters to come out on top in Sunday’s election, paving the way for the first government in a national conservative vein similar to Poland and Hungary in Western Europe.

All three party leaders are eurosceptics, if not open “Italeavers” — the Italian version of Brexiteers —  with even the relatively centre-right Berlusconi, 85, having hardened his stance on the EU after senior officials, in his view, successfully conspired to have him ousted as premier in 2011, with a technocratic government headed by Mario Monti, a former European Commissioner, replacing his without an election.

The right-populist coalition last ran for office in 2018, but the breakout stars of that election were the left-populist Five Star Movement (M5S).