Mario Draghi Masks the Longer-Term Danger for Italy
The former ECB chief has lifted his country’s stature on the European stage, but he can’t avoid Italy’s ugly national politics.
Among friends.
Photo: Bloomberg
Mario Draghi has given Italy a stature in Europe unparalleled in recent times. But his immediate success in becoming a guarantor for Italy in the eyes of Brussels and international investors masks a longer-term peril: Italy’s fractious national politics, and the rise of the country’s far right.
The European Union summit in Porto this month underlined Draghi’s achievement in putting Italy back at the bloc’s center. With Germany’s Angela Merkel absent, the former European Central Bank chief fielded media questions about international affairs — Biden, China and India — with Rome’s domestic matters apparently under control for once. Investors appear to consider Italy’s in safe hands, even though its borrowing costs are shifting upward in line with the global rise in sovereign bond yields: