The Politics of the Northern League and Italy's Changing Attitude Towards Europe

Abstract

Abstract The Northern League has risen to prominence in Italian politics over the last twenty years and has firmly placed the so‐called ‘Northern question’ at the top of the political agenda. In the mid‐1990s, prior to Italy's entry into the Single Currency, the League was decidedly pro‐European, arguing that the future of the North lay within a closely integrated ‘Europe of the regions’. From this perspective, being closer to Brussels meant being further away from Rome. The EU, however, did not prove to be the panacea that Umberto Bossi, the flamboyant leader of the League, had hoped and expected. Italy's successful entry into the Euro effectively undermined one of the central planks of the discourse surrounding secession while the Maastricht Treaty's attempt to empower regions, via institutions such as the Committee of the Regions, turned out to amount to very little. Therefore, as this article explores, in recent years the party has somewhat controversially shifted its discourse towards a staunchly anti‐EU stance, arguing that the EU is too bureaucratic and that it takes too much sovereignty away from member states. Such anti‐European rhetoric is clearly inflammatory and it also signals, rather intriguingly, something of a U‐turn in the party's stance towards the EU. The interesting point however, which the article goes on to discuss is the way in which the League's anti‐European rhetoric is influencing the direction in which the Italian government (of which it is a part) is heading. In addition, this shift raises potentially important issues that are likely to become more and more relevant elsewhere amongst other regionalist parties in the EU.