Elly Schlein, leader of Italy's Democratic Party: "There is a progressive alliance capable of defeating Meloni"

Elly Schlein is today the leading figure of the opposition to Giorgia Meloni in Italy. She welcomes me to Rome, to the Chamber of Deputies, specifically in the Enrico Berlinguer Room of the Democratic Party’s parliamentary group. Our conversation takes place on a particularly significant day: Schlein is due to address Parliament in a debate aimed at defining Italy’s position ahead of the next European Council meeting. She also invites me to attend the session from the visitors’ gallery. It is a healthy feature of Italian politics that deserves recognition: Parliament debates the government’s priorities before European Council meetings, rather than afterwards, as is the case in Spain, when the decisions have already been made.

The leader of the Democratic Party approaches the interview in a direct and straightforward manner, with clear ideas about the challenges facing Italy, Europe and the progressive movement. If there is one issue that particularly concerns her, it is wages. "Not only have wages failed to grow over the past thirty years, they have actually fallen by three percentage points," she laments. In her view, this reality explains much of the social discontent that runs through the country.

After three years of rebuilding and reuniting the progressive camp, Schlein is optimistic about the opposition’s prospects. "We are seeing tangible progress across the progressive field, and we will continue working to defeat this right-wing government," she says. She believes that the tensions within the governing coalition will eventually take their toll. "It is becoming increasingly difficult for Meloni to keep this majority together, and the problem is that ordinary Italians are paying the price," she argues.

The conversation also touches on the government’s stalled judicial reform, the debate over possible electoral reform, and the state of Italy’s institutions. But it is when discussing international affairs that Schlein’s strategic vision becomes most apparent. She believes Italy is losing influence at a crucial moment for Europe. "Today, France, Germany and the United Kingdom are in dialogue with Russian representatives. Italy is not," she notes.

She is equally critical of the government’s response to Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV. According to Schlein, government ministers chose to avoid confrontation and "took refuge in silence." On the future of the European Union, she leaves no room for ambiguity: "I believe in a federal Europe. And I believe we must continue moving in that direction. Meloni is not fighting those battles."

Throughout the interview, Schlein emerges as a politician convinced that there is a progressive alternative to the current government and that the debate over Europe’s future will be one of the defining political battlegrounds of the years ahead.
 
How can Meloni be defeated given the fragmentation that exists on the Italian left?

Unity is built not so much — or not only — against Meloni’s government, but around the things we want to do together for Italy. That is the strategy we have pursued since I became secretary of the Partito Democratico.

When I arrived, after the electoral defeat, the party was at historic lows in the polls, at around 14%, and the centre-left had practically disappeared. Through a lot of work and a major effort to build unity, we have gradually rebuilt unity around concrete issues.

The first battle in which we managed to unite the entire opposition was the fight for a minimum wage in a country where four million workers are poor despite having a job. Spain already has a minimum wage, and Pedro Sánchez’s government has increased it by more than 50%. That has helped sustain the purchasing power of workers and families, even during the energy crisis and inflation.

In Italy, by contrast, wages have not only failed to grow in thirty years, but have actually fallen by three percentage points.

Moreover, over the past four years, ISTAT (the Italian National Institute of Statistics) has certified that Italians’ real wages have lost nine percentage points, precisely while food prices were rising. This means that someone goes to the supermarket with the same salary as before and can no longer buy the same things.

"Through a lot of work and a major effort to build unity, we have gradually rebuilt unity around concrete issues"

Then we built unity around public healthcare. We presented proposals to reduce waiting lists. Because if you want to dismantle public healthcare, as the right is doing, you do not need to change the law. You only need to cut resources. Then there are not enough doctors and nurses, hospitals are emptied out, and those who have money turn to private healthcare. Those who do not give up on receiving treatment.

Today, more than six million Italians, more than one in ten, forgo healthcare because they cannot afford to wait or to pay for a private alternative. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, that figure increased by one and a half million people under Meloni’s government. That is why we proposed, together with the rest of the opposition, allocating resources to immediately hire doctors and nurses and reduce waiting lists.

What we are trying to build is a broad progressive alliance based on the principles we share: defending public healthcare, decent work, industrial policies to accompany the green and digital transition, education, universities, research, rights and democracy.

Over these three years, we have promoted legislative initiatives, proposals and joint mobilisations. Today we can say that there is a competitive progressive alliance, capable of defeating Meloni in the next elections. We have already built it in many cities where we have won together. Also in the regions: last year, elections were held in seven regions and the progressive alliance ran united, something that had not happened for twenty years.

So, within the progressive camp, we are seeing concrete progress, and we will continue working to defeat this right.

What happened after the referendum on justice? My reading is that problems are beginning to emerge within the right itself. Turnout was higher than expected. Do you think Meloni is now in a weaker position?

What happened is very simple. Giorgia Meloni’s propaganda, and that of her government, collided head-on with the reality lived by millions of Italians.

We have had almost three consecutive years of falling industrial production, stagnant economic growth, excessively low wages, endless waiting lists and a tax burden that has reached its highest level in the past twelve years.

So people did not vote only on the justice referendum?

Exactly. Such a high turnout also had a political meaning.

People went to vote to stop a justice reform that did not improve citizens’ lives, but sought to place judges under government control, just as other nationalist right-wing movements are trying to do in Europe and around the world.

They also went to defend the Italian Constitution, an anti-fascist Constitution to which Italians are deeply attached. And they also voted against this government, against its subordinate attitude towards Trump and Netanyahu.

"People went to vote to stop a justice reform that did not improve citizens’ lives"

The fifteen million negative votes were made possible by a combination of reasons. However, the government’s difficulties did not begin with the referendum. They began months earlier, when we clearly won the regional elections in Campania and Apulia.

They held on to Veneto, which was fairly predictable, but something significant happened there. Matteo Salvini obtained a result in Veneto that doubled Meloni’s, thanks to the candidacy of the former regional president. That immediately generated tensions within the coalition.

We also saw those tensions when I had reached an agreement with Meloni on a basic law to protect women: the "only yes means yes" rule. In other words, any sexual act without consent should be considered sexual violence. Many European countries, including Spain, have already approved laws of this kind.

We had voted unanimously on the text on a Thursday in this Chamber. The sessions ended on Monday, and on Tuesday the majority blew up the agreement because Salvini no longer wanted it. That was the first real moment of weakness I saw in Meloni: she was unable to impose an agreement that she herself had reached with me.

Then came the disputes over the budget, to the point of putting the approval of the accounts before 31 December at risk. And they have also argued intensely over foreign policy, because in reality they do not have one foreign policy: they have three.

"The «only yes means yes» rule was the first real moment of weakness I saw in Meloni: she was unable to impose an agreement that she herself had reached with me"

In the resolution approved today by the majority, which criticised the opposition for its divisions, all the contentious issues disappeared. For example, it talks about European Union enlargement to the Balkans, but not about Ukraine. It is easy to hide divisions when uncomfortable words are removed from documents. They even reached an absurd point: they were arguing about military support for Ukraine and resolved the conflict simply by removing the word "military" from a decree that continued to send military aid.

That is the level of tension that exists within the majority.
 
The governing coalition wants to change the electoral law. In what sense are they proposing this? And, in relation to what we have just discussed, do you think that after the referendum it will be harder for them to push through this new electoral law?

On the second point: yes, also because they are divided on the issue. Not everyone is enthusiastic about the reform.

In fact, a week before the referendum, while Italians were paying twice as much for petrol because of the illegal war driven by Trump and Netanyahu, the government called an urgent summit. We thought it would be devoted to wages or to the cost of energy, which is reducing the competitiveness of our companies. But no. The meeting was about the electoral law.

Meloni wanted to seal a written agreement before the referendum because she knew that afterwards it could become more complicated. Why are they doing this? Because they are afraid of losing. They are trying to lock in a victory through a law that we consider unacceptable, because it establishes a very strong majority bonus that would allow the majority, almost on its own, to reach certain institutional guarantee thresholds.

In reality, this electoral reform is a kind of preview of the premierato project, Meloni’s major institutional reform, which she has now stopped because she probably does not want to face another constitutional referendum. What holds this majority together is not a shared vision of the country, but a pact of power.

"This electoral reform is a kind of preview of the 'premierato' project, Meloni’s major institutional reform, which she has now stopped"

They are much more divided than we are, but they remain united by power interests and by an agreement between different reforms: the differentiated autonomy defended by the League, which risks fracturing Italy and increasing territorial inequalities; the justice reform historically promoted by Berlusconi and Forza Italia; and Fratelli d’Italia’s premierato project.

The first was partially dismantled by the Constitutional Court because it was unconstitutional. They are trying to get around that ruling, but we will oppose them. The second has been rejected by fifteen million Italians. And on the third, they have stopped for now, although they are trying to introduce it indirectly through electoral reform.

That is why we have joined forces with the rest of the opposition to prevent it.

What role has Trump played in Meloni’s weakening? It was said that she was a very important ally for Trump within Europe. Now it seems that Meloni is changing position.

It seems so. However, even after the referendum and the defeat, and also after Trump’s unacceptable attacks, we have seen no real changes. I myself denounced those attacks in Parliament.

Something, by the way, that the leader of the opposition in Spain did not do.

It was a duty to react when a foreign head of state attacks the Italian government. We may be political opponents inside this Chamber, but we remain representatives of Italians. We cannot accept threats or attacks from another head of state, especially from a historically allied country.

In the same way, it was also necessary to defend Pope Leo against Trump’s unprecedented attacks.

All of this created an important political fracture. But in practice, we have seen no change in the government’s foreign policy. After Trump’s attacks, they retreated into silence. Partly because they do not have a coherent foreign policy, and partly because they fear another reaction from Trump.

That means betraying Italy’s diplomatic tradition, a country that has always been on the front line when it comes to peace. Peace is written into our Constitution. Today France, Germany and the United Kingdom are talking to Russian representatives. Italy is not.

A few days ago, there was talk of European enlargement towards Montenegro, and Italy was not there either. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Meloni to keep this majority together, and the problem is that Italians are the ones paying the price.

"[Meloni] wanted to present herself as the bridge between Europe and Trump. However, that bridge collapsed under Trump’s bombs, including the commercial ones"

When Trump returned to power, Meloni was one of the few European leaders present at the inauguration ceremony. She wanted to present herself as the bridge between Europe and Trump. However, that bridge collapsed under Trump’s bombs, including the commercial ones. Meloni was then trapped in a very complicated position. Hers has been the only European government to minimise the impact of tariffs in a country that is heavily dependent on exports.

Meanwhile, Pedro Sánchez reacted quickly, mobilising 13 billion euros to protect workers and companies. The Italian government announced a 24-billion-euro plan, but in reality those were already existing funds that had been redistributed. It was not even implemented as promised.

This is also the only European government that described a unilateral military action in Venezuela as "legitimate defence". It is the only government that has agreed to participate as an observer in the Board of Peace while Netanyahu systematically violates international law. They are not working for a just peace, which in Gaza can only exist if illegal settlements end and the Palestinian state is clearly recognised.

It is also the only government incapable of saying a very simple sentence: "Hands off Greenland". Meloni’s subordination has had a very high cost for Italy. I have seen no change, except in the defence of the Pope.

And honestly, I would have preferred the confrontation with Trump to have taken place over a war that is seriously damaging the world economy and also the Italian economy. What we are seeing is the attempt by a new global nationalist right to replace international law with the law of the strongest and the richest.

That is precisely what we discussed in Barcelona, at the global progressive mobilisation summit with Pedro Sánchez, Lula and more than one hundred progressive movements from around the world. We want to rebuild an international order based on peace, dialogue, cooperation and respect for international law. There can be no double standards.

We rightly unite to defend Ukraine against Putin’s criminal aggression because it violated international law. But we cannot remain silent when crimes are committed in Gaza or when a historic ally such as the United States acts unilaterally. If we accept those exceptions, we legitimise others doing the same.

I was recently in Canada and met Barack Obama and Mark Carney. Carney said something very interesting: that the international order will be rebuilt because we are not willing to accept a more brutal world, and that Europe must play a central role in that reconstruction.

To do that, Europe has to change. It must overcome unanimity in decision-making, which Meloni opposes. It must move forward through enhanced cooperation when treaty reform is not possible. It must promote common European investment. Only in this way can we avoid being crushed between the military and commercial pressures around us.

We need a major European industrial plan, investment in innovation, social cohesion, the green transition and common defence. Meloni also opposes common European defence.

"If you accept Trump’s demand to raise military spending to 5% of GDP, but reject integrated European defence, all you are doing is buying more American weapons"

If you accept Trump’s demand to raise military spending to 5% of GDP, but reject integrated European defence, common chains of command and a stronger European military industry, all you are doing is buying more American weapons. That does not increase European strategic autonomy; it reduces it.

Moreover, on energy, while Spain accelerated investment in renewables for years and managed to reduce electricity costs enormously, Italy continues to pay much higher prices.

I remember that, after the attacks on Iran, there were days when the wholesale energy price in Italy reached 180 euros per megawatt hour, while in Spain it was barely 18 euros. Ten times less.
 
You said today in the Chamber of Deputies that Italy is not growing. But Italy has received Next Generation funds. What has happened? Can it be said that, unlike Spain, Italy has not been able to resolve some of the structural problems holding back productivity and growth?

That is a great question. In fact, it is a question I constantly ask economists, business leaders and experts. Because the money arrived.

And one thing is clear: without the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), which Giorgia Meloni’s party did not even vote for in Brussels, Italy would already be in recession today. So yes, it has had effects. The question is why those effects have not been sufficient to generate stronger growth.

In my view, this government has not carried out the necessary reforms, because it lacks a strategic vision and because it is internally divided when it comes to confronting corporate interests and deeply rooted structural problems. They also act in a very ideological way. When they came to power, there was a mechanism that worked very well: Industry 4.0. If you visit any Italian company, you will find advanced machinery acquired thanks to those incentives. It was a stable system, well known and appreciated by the business community.

But because it was not their initiative, they decided to remove it and replace it with "Transition 5.0". And what happened? They announced a reform and took nine months to implement it. The result? Investment paralysis. The same happened with the PNRR.

"This government has not carried out the necessary reforms, because it lacks a strategic vision and because it is internally divided"

Because it was not a plan designed by them, they insisted on modifying it. But they wasted a huge amount of time. The modifications were presented more than a year after they came to power and largely consisted of recentralising resources. They cut funds from municipalities and regions that were implementing projects well and transferred them to ministries, which usually spend more slowly.

They did this because many of those municipalities are governed by the Partito Democratico. Meanwhile, they still do not understand that productivity increases through research and innovation. Italy still devotes a very low percentage of GDP to research. Today, research is precarious, and this government has made it even more precarious. We train excellent researchers who then go abroad.

I also find what is being done in Spain on the reduction of working hours very interesting. You have approved a law that promotes pilot schemes and agreements between companies and trade unions. We have presented similar proposals, but the government does not even want to discuss them. And yet, wherever it has been applied, productivity has increased. That dismantles many neoliberal arguments that remain stuck thirty years in the past.

With artificial intelligence and digital technologies, it is clear that we will be able to work better and perhaps even fewer hours. But the social pact must consist of redistributing the added value generated by those technologies. Because if we do not, inequalities will increase and we will see ever greater concentration of wealth, power and knowledge in very few hands.

I always say this, even when I do not have Spanish media in front of me. Spain has shown that there is a progressive recipe for growing while reducing inequalities. And I also discussed that with Pedro Sánchez in Barcelona.

Spain has increased the minimum wage and strengthened workers’ purchasing power. It has also implemented European funds well and on time, generating growth, employment and productivity.

On the other hand, Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz reached agreements with trade unions and companies to drastically reduce temporary employment. Meanwhile, in Italy more than half of under-24s know only labour precariousness.

If you have a contract that lasts one month and you do not know whether you will still be working the following month, you cannot become independent. You cannot rent a home in Rome, Milan, Florence, Bologna, Naples or Venice. You cannot start a family. And that has direct consequences for the birth rate. Precariousness particularly affects young people, women and the south of the country.

In addition, there is a lack of public care services for children and elderly people. And in the end, it is women who disproportionately bear the burden of that invisible work.

"Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz reached agreements to reduce temporary employment. Meanwhile, in Italy more than half of under-24s know only labour precariousness"

In Spain, there is a serious debate about the distribution of care responsibilities. We presented a united proposal from the whole opposition to extend parental leave. If in Spain it is three months, we are proposing five months also for fathers, financed at 100%. We do not want to force women to choose between work and family. But the government has blocked this proposal, just as it blocked the minimum wage.

It used part of our initiative and called it a "fair wage", but without establishing a mandatory minimum threshold. And so we still have workers earning five euros an hour and needing three jobs to survive.

Spain has also developed interesting policies to attract talent. We have recently presented a proposal partly inspired by those experiences. I also consider some of the proposals in the report prepared by my predecessor, Enrico Letta, on the future of the European single market to be very valuable. In particular, I find the idea of the so-called "28th regime" interesting: a formula to simplify and harmonise rules at European level.
 
What is happening between Ursula von der Leyen and Meloni? There seems to be some kind of special political relationship. Last week Italy obtained more budgetary flexibility.

The first thing I want to say is that we have always defended greater fiscal flexibility. What we criticised was the new Stability Pact, because it reproduces past mistakes.

The experience of the pandemic showed that expansionary policies work. And today the geopolitical context is even more complicated than it was then. If Europe does not continue with common investments, it will be trapped between the United States, Russia and China.

Europe’s only possibility is to take a leap forward. What I miss is the political courage we did see during the pandemic. Back then, the European Commission suspended the Stability Pact, launched common instruments and set in motion the largest shared investment programme in European history.

I am a convinced Europeanist. I believe in a federal Europe. And I think we must continue along that path. Meloni is not fighting those battles.

"If Europe does not continue with common investments, it will be trapped between the United States, Russia and China"

That said, it is normal for there to be an institutional relationship between the Commission and the Italian government. And it is logical that a certain degree of flexibility was granted. However, I also think the Commission responded intelligently to the attacks Meloni had launched against Brussels.

Since Meloni cannot present good economic results, she has gone back to an old argument: blaming Europe.

The Commission responded by saying: "Here is fiscal space. Use it". But not to temporarily patch up energy bills; rather, to invest in renewables, electricity grids and energy storage. It was a very politically astute response.

That said, we belong to the European social-democratic family and we will not accept a policy of variable alliances in the European Parliament. If there is a pro-European majority supporting the Commission, that majority cannot be ignored when issues such as the green transition or immigration are debated.

"Since Meloni cannot present good economic results, she has gone back to an old argument: blaming Europe"

Meloni boasts of having changed European migration policy. In reality, she has done exactly the opposite. She has abandoned the battle that truly mattered to Italy: a fair distribution of reception responsibilities among all member states. That is written in the Treaties. Solidarity and the sharing of responsibilities should be basic principles.

Today, seven countries bear around 80% of all asylum applications in Europe. That was the battle we had always defended. I myself worked on the Dublin reform between 2014 and 2019 for the European socialist group. We argued that whoever arrives in Italy, Spain, Greece or Germany is actually arriving in Europe. Therefore, all countries must take their share. Meloni completely abandoned that position, both for ideological reasons and because she did not have the courage to stand up to Viktor Orbán.

Nor can she continue using the famous migrant centre in Albania as an excuse. It has not become any kind of European model. European rules and the judgments of the Court of Justice made clear that it could not be used to deport asylum seekers as she initially intended.

That is why they had to turn it into a detention centre for irregular migrants. They transfer them from Italy to Albania, keep them there, and then have to return them to Italy to proceed with expulsion because they cannot be expelled from Albania. It is an absurd system.

According to our calculations, nearly 800 million euros of public money have been spent that could have been used to strengthen security or hire more police officers. Officers end up guarding centres that are practically empty.

In two years, only 536 people have passed through them. Meloni promised there would be 36,000 a year. Let us do a simple fact-checking exercise: if approximately 200 million has been spent to manage 536 people, the cost exceeds 370,000 euros per person. With that amount, decades of reception in Italy could be financed.

Thank you very much.