Photo Gallery The Roman Tragedy
Matteo Salvini, leader of the right-wing populist party Lega, has emerged as the true political winner of the Italian elections. He has said repeatedly over the years that Italy would leave the eurozone under his leadership. We don't need a referendum, he once said, "If Lega enters the government, we're out."
You have to look beyond Rome to see why droves of Italians have voted for the populist Lega and Five Star Movement parties. To places like Priolo Gargallo in Sicily, where unemployment is much higher than the national average and youth joblessness is at 50 percent. People are frustrated with the traditional political elite.
This has driven them into the arms of politicians like Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio, seen here in Naples earlier this week. Italy's new government is the horror scenario the European Union has been fearing for years. The worry is that the new government will push deficit spending so high that it will throw the country into crisis. Italy, the EU says, is too big to bail out, with its over 2 trillion euros in sovereign debt.
Supporters of the Five Star Movement at an event in Sicily: One politician with the party running for mayor in the region says she feels Europe abandoned Italy during the refugee crisis. She once viewed the EU as being like one big family, "but it isn't."
Italy is home to extreme contrasts -- parts of Sicily, the country's poorhouse, can feel like North Africa. But the north, in places like Milan, is highly prosperous and includes some of the richest areas in all of Europe. The average per capita economic output in the south is 18,600 euros, a little more than half the northern Italian average of 34,000 euros.
The fact that the European Union and Merkel haven't pursued fundamental reforms of the eurozone and the EU proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron is now coming back to haunt them. The window of opportunity for strengthening the eurozone was always narrow. Now it appears to be closing.
On Sunday, Italian President Sergio Mattarella intervened and rejected the first attempt by Lega and the Five Star Movement to form a government. He said he could not approve the appointment of the anti-euro Paolo Savona as finance minister. But Savona has now returned, and been approved by Mattarella, as the EU affairs minister.
