At the start of a year in which she will face her first real test of popular opinion at the European Parliament elections in June, Giorgia Meloni will be hoping for some cheer from growth figures out next week. She is unlikely to get any. The last reckoning showed the economy had grown by a bare 0.1% in the 12 months since Italy’s hard-right prime minister took office in October 2022. Nicola Nobile of Oxford Economics, a forecasting group, says quarter-on-quarter growth in the last three months of 2023 may even have turned negative.
No blame has so far attached to Ms Meloni’s stewardship. Nor should it yet. The economy was hit badly by the pandemic, and its recovery seemed sure to peter out. More recently it has faced new difficulties, notably from the energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the lack of growth is one of two clouds in an otherwise largely clear sky. The second is a surge in the irregular immigration that Ms Meloni’s right-wing coalition is bent on curbing. The number of arrivals from the Mediterranean rose to almost 160,000 last year, a 50% increase on 2022 and the highest figure since the peak year of 2016. The government is hoping to divert some boats to holding centres in Albania. But the plan has run into legal challenges there.
Source link : https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/01/23/giorgia-meloni-has-proved-the-doubters-wrong
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Publish date : 2024-01-23 03:00:00
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