The regional lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor of the resolution on Wednesday, with 26 out of 31 deputies calling on the national authorities to change the country’s stance on the issue.
“The members of the [regional] parliament voted to recognize the right of self-determination of the people of Crimea and to lift the sanctions,” says Italian politician Stefano Valdegamberi.
Although the resolution is not legally binding, “It’s a message that a region of Italy gives to the Italian government, and it’s very significant,” the politician said, adding that it has also been supported by members of Italy’s ruling Democratic Party. “It is very important. More Italian regions force the government to change its foreign policy,” Valdegamberi said.
This while some 10,000 representatives of the agricultural sector who brought tractors and are currently protesting in Verona against the EU sanctions and subsequent Russian countermeasures, such as the food embargo. This is a similar situation we also see in France where the population are getting tired of E.U sanctions and restraints. Today we have a tractor revolution by farmers in Finland, France as well as Italy all calling to end the sanctions with Russia. As it seems, after the Arab-Spring we are currently witnessing a Euro-Spring.
Farmers from different parts of Finland with their tractors participate in a demonstration over declining agricultural sector and ongoing sanctions against Russia.
Tractor revolution in France
In 2014, relations between Russia and the European Union, including Italy, deteriorated amid the crisis in Ukraine. Brussels, Washington and their allies introduced several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions over Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and joining with Russia, accusing Moscow of meddling in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
But Italy, France and the whole southern Europe needs Russia. Unemployment is over 20% in Spain, Portugal, and Italy while youth unemployment is even higher. Historically when unemployment is high amongst the youth, expect them to join the military. With Russia’s resurgence it is forcing Europe and particularly Germany to get back into its military buildup while the US refuses to pay the full cost of the NATO alliance.
Germany’s military buildup
The relationship between Russia and Italy goes back a long way. Unlike many other Western European countries, Italy has traditionally always maintained good relationships with Russia, even during the Soviet era. Russia was Italy’s sixth largest foreign trade partner while Italy is generally considered to be the second largest consumer of Russian exports. Italy is Russia’s fifth-largest foreign trade partner. Russia also supplies energy (15 percent of Russian oil and 30 percent of gas is exported to Italy), ferrous and nonferrous metals and timber, while Italy delivers manufactured goods, machinery, chemical products, consumer wares and textile fabrics to Russia.
Another common issue is the influx of Muslim refugees seeking asylum in Italy: Rome fears that ISIS terrorists could enter the country and cooperation with Russia in the field of security and counter-terrorism is a priority in that regard.
The anti E.U sentiment was proven true when Virginia Raggi’s landslide victory in Rome’s mayoral race this month. This was just the tip of the iceberg for Italy’s populist, Eurosceptic Five Star Movement, as the party swept an astonishing 19 of 20 such races in the Italian towns and cities in which its candidates were running for mayor.
ITALY’S PERFECT STORM COULD TOPPLE THE EU
Approaching eight years since the financial crisis, the European banking system remains its vulnerable underbelly and the economies and banking systems of the southern Europeans remain fragile. Italy has a banking system that desperately needs capital but doesn’t have access to it and the government is prohibited from providing it. Brexit has created a fresh wave of pressure for the Italian banks. In the wake of the expected outcome of the Brexit vote, there has been a widespread sell-off of European banks with the sector’s share prices down 33 per cent this year.
The Italian banks have been smashed. Italy’s biggest bank, Unicredit, has lost more than 30 per cent of its value since the vote and more than 60 per cent since the start of the year.
The aggressively anti-establishment Five Star Movement’s success in Italy’s local elections this month — it won the mayoral contests for Rome and Turin as well as a host of less high-profile cities and towns — is a threat to the government’s Democratic Party and to the EU.
New Rome’s Mayor Virginia Raggi of the 5-Star Movement waves at the end of a press conference in Rome. |AP
Today the prospect of Italy revolting and emulating the UK couldn’t be disregarded.
Throughout history, things do switch and they flip on a dime. Euro-federalists accused Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party of lies like those of Nazi propagandists; Mr Farage, reminding MEPs that they had laughed at him 17 years ago, when he was first elected on a get-Britain-out ticket, crowed “You’re not laughing now, are you?” “Long live free nations! Long live the United Kingdom! Long live France!” declared a jubilant Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front (FN). The Brexit vote, she announced, was “by far the most important historic event known by our continent since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
And like Farage of the UK, Italy has The Northern League which called for a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro two years ago, and might now up its demand to a full exit. It has not been doing particularly well at the polls of late, but an economic crisis could change that.
The EU has suffered many upsets in recent years, including the huge challenges of the debt crisis in the euro zone and the mass influx of refugees and other migrants. But Brexit is qualitatively different. It strikes at the very idea of a union, rather than its shoddy or misguided implementation.
Eurosceptics across Europe are moved by dissatisfactions similar to those of Britain’s Leave voters: resentment of globalisation; estrangement from elites; a sense that the EU is distant, undemocratic and overbearing; and, above all, a conviction that the cherished openness of the EU has let in too many foreigners who take away jobs, benefits and national identity.
Since 2011, we have seen much change. The Arab Spring was a change we shouldn’t have believed in, yet it was the reverse of what we witness happening in the E.U. While the Arab Spring undermined national sovereignty, the Euro-Spring upholds it.
Today we see a Euro Spring. Popular support for the EU has collapsed across the continent, nowhere more strikingly than in France, where French nationalists prepared posters featuring a pair of chained wrists breaking free, under the caption: “Brexit: and now France!”
Ms Le Pen talks of a “People’s spring” in Europe, a phrase redolent, rather unfortunately, of the Arab one on the far side of the Mediterranean. The ‘Patriot Spring’ is currently sweeping the European continent. Countries including as Austria, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Denmark are calling for referendums on their own membership of the EU, as well as on issues such as the migrant allocation policy and the euro.
Once the driving force of the EU, the French are now among its most Eurosceptic citizens. A recent survey of major EU countries by the Pew Research Centre finds that they have a more unfavourable view of the union than is found in any other country bar Greece. Euroscepticism is also sweeping in France as well where a protracted economic crisis and anger over immigration have led to a rejection of the EU, with the nation polling at over 50 per cent of citizens as having a strong desire to have a referendum on membership.
Italy’s centre-left prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has staked his future on a constitutional referendum this autumn. The vote is not directly about Europe; Mr Renzi wants Italy to replace its dysfunctional legislature with a unicameral parliament and an electoral system that produces stable majorities. If he loses and resigns as a result, Italy could fall into political and economic chaos; alarmed markets might trigger a banking crisis.
Renzi is already losing popularity. It is a volatile situation. If Mr Renzi goes Italy will be set adrift again, and fears that it might leave the euro—as both the Five Star Movement and the Northern League wish to do—would return. In Germany, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, wants to see action quickly and they are lining up with its fellow socialists in France who want to see Britain beginning to pay for the “consequences” of its action as soon as possible. While France is divided with majority wanting a referendum, Russia sees Brexit as a victory—even though it had little to do with it. Unlike the common diagnosis that Russia will weaken as result of boycott, we predict its strength and rise.
The EU also imports more from China than anywhere else; weaker growth will be unwelcome when China is wrestling with mountainous debts and oversupply in heavy industry. Decreased European demand would exacerbate those problems combined with European weakness sees the dollar strengthen further as investors flock to the safety of American assets.
For years alarmists warned about the American greenback collapsing and we said ‘don’t listen’. Americans who complain haven’t lived in the rest of the world. This whole month we endured how Donald Trump was losing against Hillary in the polls and today, the most trusted pollster in the U.S., Rasmussen, says that Trump leads Hillary by 4 points, Trump with 43% of the vote, while Clinton earns 39%. Things flip on a dime and contrary to what journalists say. Or perhaps the case is:
Nationalism is on the way
A change we believe in
While globalism is out the door
With Hillary Obama and their treason
Pollsters were just
making things up
All the while Americans shout:
Viva Trump
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