The European Union by Chris Bickerton

Author:Chris Bickerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141983103
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

From the margins to the mainstream

On a warm day in early September 2007, an Italian comedian stepped onto a stage and greeted a crowd of over 100,000 people in the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna, a bigger crowd than when Italians had flocked to the square to celebrate their country’s success in the World Cup a year before. On the same day, around two million people came together in 220 cities.15 This was the beginning of the Five Star Movement, founded by Beppe Grillo, a complex figure often described – to English-speaking audiences – as Italy’s Michael Moore. The origins of the Five Star Movement lie in Grillo’s profound disaffection and disgust for the Italian political establishment, which he calls ‘la casta’.16 Grillo organized in 2007 a series of simultaneous public demonstrations, under the title of Vaffanculo (roughly translated from Italian as ‘go fuck yourself’). These were days of rage against the corruption of the political elite and its unexpected success spurred on the building of a country-wide social movement.

The Five Star Movement dates back to Beppe Grillo’s blog, which he started writing in 2005.17 Grillo then began providing ‘guarantees’ to candidates in local elections, backing them as ‘clean’ individuals, untainted by ties to the establishment. In 2008 and in 2009, the first local councillors from the Five Star Movement were elected. In 2010, the Movement obtained over half a million votes in regional elections, and in the local elections the next year the Movement put up many more candidates and won almost 10 per cent of the vote in Bologna. The 2012 local elections were a turning point: the Five Star Movement candidates were successful in thirty-four of the seventy-four municipalities in which they had fielded candidates. In the same year, the Movement won the mayoral race in Parma. Citizens of a city saddled with hundreds of millions of euros of debt put their faith in Federico Pizzarotti, an IT consultant with no prior political experience. The electoral earthquake of February 2013, which saw the Five Star Movement crowned as the largest political party in Italy, sparked international interest. The Grillini, as members of the Movement are known, descended onto Rome, many of them in their twenties and thirties, with no prior experience of politics. The success of 2013 was repeated the following year in the European elections, where Grillo’s Movement came second in the polls. The Five Star Movement is now one of the two main opposition forces in Italy, along with the Northern League. Grillo himself may be tired and some of his supporters are weary of his style of leadership, but as a social and political force the Movement is at the heart of Italian politics and it has brought with it its critique of the EU.

Grillo is critical of the euro in particular and his movement has called for a referendum on euro membership in Italy. He argues that the euro has been created for the benefit of banks rather than of the people. The EU, intended to unite the continent, has divided it and become a nightmare.

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