Mario Draghi's resignation as Italian prime minister: reasons behind a highly controversial decision

Just as the Draghi government, the 67th in the history of the Italian Republic, was about to enter its eighteenth month, its Prime Minister, the Roman economist and financier Mario Draghi, decided to tender his resignation to Sergio Mattarella, the President of the Republic. The trigger is well known: the refusal of the Five Star Movement to give its support in both chambers of parliament to the executive's "aid decree" aimed at helping the Italian population with around 23 billion euros in the face of the rising cost of living as a result of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis resulting from it.

But in reality, the decision by Draghi, a man known for his careful consideration of every step, was not really caused by this lack of support, but in fact the absence of the Five Star Movement is just the final trigger for something that goes back much further than we think. The closest example is the Monti government (2011-13), which, after starting with a high level of parliamentary support, found itself, in the second half of 2012, completely abandoned by the political forces and was limited to only approving the State Budget for 2013. It was thought that with Draghi, known for his extraordinary national and international stature, and with a lot of money to manage, everything would be different, but this has met with the same thing as previous independent Prime Ministers: when the general elections approach, the parties completely forget about supporting the government and only think about how to get as many votes as possible.

The Draghi government started very strongly when it received the "incarico" from the President of the Republic at the beginning of February 2021. All the major parties, with the exception of Roma Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia, gave him their support: Five Star Movement, League, Forza Italia, Democratic Party and Italia Viva. When the time came to submit to the confidence of the chambers, more than two-thirds voted in favour of the Draghi government in both chambers, something unheard of since the days of Christian Democracy (DC), a party that disappeared in 1993 and dominated transalpine political life from the Second World War until the early 1990s.

Draghi, in turn, put together a very well thought-out government: the decisive portfolios (eight), for independents like himself; the rest of the portfolios (fifteen), for politicians belonging to "maggioranza" parties. And with Draghi assuming from the outset the weight of governing the executive, with weekly appearances in which he has appeared most of the time alone, leaving other ministers only on very rare and justified occasions. What is more, the members of his government have only appeared either with Draghi or in Parliament: they have had practically no presence in the media. And there was a reason for this, since the sure value of that government was the person of Draghi: he was placed at the head of the Executive and the risk premium immediately fell as the stock market rose. Because for the financial markets, the fact that a former president of the European Central Bank, with outstanding management in the years (2011-19) that he was at the head of this institution, was the best guarantee of effectiveness in the work to be done.

Draghi, on the other hand, was very clear about the type of reforms to be carried out: justice, taxation, infrastructures, social inequality, education. It was clear that he had been working on it for months, as if he expected to be called upon at any moment, which is what President Mattarella finally did at the beginning of February 2021. There was a lot of money involved (the 209 billion in the so-called "Recovery Fund"), and all that was needed was someone who knew how to manage it in the best possible way.

Thus, the first months of the Draghi government went as smoothly as possible. The only setback was the split within the Five Star Movement, as a (not very important) part of its parliamentarians considered it a mistake to support a prominent representative of the international economic and financial world, and therefore decided to leave for the Mixed Group. But this remained anecdotal: Draghi still had enough votes to govern. And time proved the wisdom of his choice: of the 8.9 points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lost in 2020, Draghi managed to recover no less than 6.3 in just one year. This contrasted with neighbouring Spain, which only recovered 5.1 of the 10.8 lost in 2020. This gave Draghi the possibility of being able to treat the two main economies of the Eurozone (Germany and France) as equals, and to bring his country into the leadership of the European Union, something not seen since the times when the socialist Bettino Craxi was Prime Minister, which happened between 1983 and 1987.

But it all started to go wrong with the presidential election at the end of January this year. The veteran Mattarella had completed his seven years in office, wanted to retire and a new head of state had to be found, something Draghi would almost certainly have been elected to do had he not agreed to become Prime Minister a year earlier. And it was on the occasion of this event that Draghi began to realise that the parties had already forgotten about the main issues facing the country and were getting down to tactics with an eye to next year's general election. Salvini tried to play king-maker, but there was his rival Meloni, a coalition partner but at the same time his main competitor on the centre-right, to prevent Salvini from getting his candidate through. Salvini, in turn, ensured that the prestigious magistrate Nordio, Meloni's candidate, could not be elected President of the Republic either. In the end, the President of the Senate, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Caselatti, a member of Forza Italia but with many enemies within her party (who saw her as belonging to the most right-wing faction of the party) was chosen to get her name voted in: the 382 votes she obtained showed that no less than six dozen members of her party had voted against her under the cover of the secret ballot (the famous "snipers").

 Meanwhile, the centre-left, the key to bringing forward any candidate (as happened for decades between Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party, bitter rivals but who always ended up agreeing on a name for the head of state), systematically blocked any name proposed by the centre-right, despite the fact that it was up to the latter, because it had the largest number of votes, to name the new tenant of the Quirinal Palace. And in between, a Five Star Movement without a real leader that was as quick to talk to Salvini to find a candidate as it was to appear to be on the side of the Democratic Party (PD), a party with which it has been agreeing candidates for the various administrative elections for years. What happened is well known: after six days of discussions and eight failed votes, the parliamentary forces showed up at the Quirinal to measure him against a Mattarella who had already packed his bags to retire to his native Palermo with the aim of asking him to accept re-election. And the veteran Sicilian politician and jurist, a statesman of which there are practically no more left, had no choice but to accept, becoming the second most voted head of state in the history of the Italian Republic after Sandro Pertini, elected back in 1978.

It was there that Draghi began to realise that the war between parties, and within each party, had begun, but the worst was yet to come. And that change in dynamics began on 24 February, when the Russian army decided to invade Ukraine. The European Union sided with the Ukrainians, began to send arms and sanction packages against the Russian government, and... Draghi began to perceive that he was being left alone, when in fact all he was doing was aligning himself with an EU that was showering its economy with funds (although it is true that Draghi himself led the hard line against Russia). What happened then? Parties began to act on their own. The Five Star Movement began to demand that less money should be spent on the war and more on alleviating the negative effects of this conflict on the national economy; Salvini, in turn, decided to launch his own diplomacy in search of a "peace" that he could not achieve (among other things because he was not even a member of the government), making trips to Moscow (the second one not made) without having obtained the mandatory "approval" of his Prime Minister; and the rest of the parties were lukewarm towards the firm stance of the "premier" Draghi.

This began to turn into a real conflict when the EU demanded that all its members increase investment in military spending, because the time for living off the extraordinary US investment in this area was running out. To Draghi's perplexity, the Five Star Movement positioned itself completely against this increase in spending, when the reality was that, during the time in which they had controlled the presidency of the Council of Ministers (June 2018-January 2021), military spending had increased the most.

But the straw that broke the camel's back was what happened with the reform of the justice system, one of the Draghi government's "star" measures: in a country famous for charging anyone with extraordinary ease (the so-called "avvisi di garanzia") but which at the same time is where the time it takes longest to reach a definitive conviction or acquittal (crimes often end up becoming time-barred because of the time elapsed between the charge and the sentence), this reform was one of the most important. And Draghi had put his most prestigious jurist, Marta Cartabia, the first person to preside over the Superior Council of the Magistracy and a protégé of President Mattarella, with whom the now head of state had worked side by side for years, at its head.

Well, the same Parliament that had approved the Cartabia Law in August 2021 with an overwhelming "yes" in the lower house, then a year later, turned a blind eye to this same reform. Draghi decided to submit it to a "referendum" to coincide with the administrative elections due to be held on 12 June, but found that only 18% of the population decided to take part: a simply ridiculous figure! Of course, when it became clear that only the League had campaigned for it, it became clear why it had been ignored in this way.

Here now those who snubbed Draghi were neither Five Star (which, yes, would have preferred the Bonafede law to have been passed in the end, but by that time Bonafede had long since ceased to be the head of Justice) nor the League, but the Democratic Party (PD) and Renzi's Italia Viva. In the case of the PD, through its most sympathetic media (the daily La Repubblica, the second most important in the country), they published an editorial the day before the vote that read: "Why we must vote no". And Renzi, in turn, immersed in the middle of legal proceedings against the institution that had financed his political career (the "Open" Foundation), expressed his opposition to this reform because it did not put an end to the problem of the currents within the judiciary.

 The Cartabia Law would end up going through parliament a week later, but the reality was that, due to the lack of support from the "maggioranza" parties, the necessary "endorsement" of the population had left it very limited in terms of its capacity to act, and it could be repealed as soon as the next government arrived. And this made it increasingly clear that Draghi had become the Monti of the second half of 2012: an independent Prime Minister whose confidence was not withdrawn by the political forces but who was increasingly ignored and snubbed by them. It was probably here that Draghi began to weigh more and more on executing his phrase spoken at the beginning of his mandate: "I will govern as long as I have the support of the Parliament". And that support was beginning to fade by the week.

Then came the final trigger: Di Maio and his split with 60 Five Star MPs, and the direct confrontation between the party's leadership and the Prime Minister. This led Draghi to spend two weeks trying to recompose the "maggioranza" until Five Star finally turned its back on him twice. From having more than 260 votes when he asked the Senate for "fiducia" (confidence) in February 2021, Draghi was left with only 179 votes. No point in continuing to try to govern: how long would it take for the next largest party (Salvini's League) to abandon him? So the Roman economist and financier did not think twice and went to the Quirinal to present his resignation to the President of the Republic. Resignation not accepted by Mattarella, but which will surely be accepted once Draghi has made the trip to Algeria at the beginning of next week to obtain the all-important energy resources, and also once he has appeared in parliament to explain the reasons for his resignation.

The reality is that the general election is very, very close. That many parliamentarians are that the parties that received the most votes in 2018 (Five Star Movement and the League, although the PD narrowly beat Salvini in that election) are already in the polls and want to go to the opposition to try to "save the furniture" as much as possible. And that there is time to call elections, for these to be held and for a new government to be formed in time to draw up and approve budgets for the year 2023, while the "Recovery Fund" continues to be applied: the victory of the centre-right will surely be overwhelming, and the only unknown is who will have the most voted list (whether Meloni or Salvini).

So Draghi can continue for a few more months (indeed, he would do so even though he would have an acting government), another person can be appointed and little else. The legislature is coming to an end, and Mattarella knows it. That is why Draghi has not given it a second thought: Parliament no longer supports him and he has not the slightest intention of dragging his feet as President of the Council of Ministers. His prestige and track record in all respects are too much to put him through such an ordeal.

With a closed list system, with electoral law in full force (the "Rossatellum bis") and with the coronavirus issue sufficiently under control, it makes no sense to continue with a government of independents. It is now up to President Mattarella to decide what to do, but as a parliamentarian for decades and a person who has been involved in politics since he was a child (his father, Bernardo, was already a minister five times with the DC), he knows that, barring an unexpected last-minute solution, the best thing to do is to go to early elections. And let others deal with the various problems affecting the country: Draghi and Mattarella have already done too much. They have a sense of state that the others do not have. And the best thing, in these cases, is to give the citizens a say, and they will pass judgement on what has happened in these months.

Do they now understand why disaffection with politics is becoming increasingly important and worrying?

-Pablo Martín de Santa Olalla Saludes is Professor at the Centro Universitario ESERP and author of the book Historia de la Italia republicana, 1946-2021 (Sílex Ediciones, 2021).