However, some officials believe that relationship was strained when the Bank’s head of research, Fabrizio Balassone, criticized a government budget draft last month, suggesting that tax cuts aimed at the middle classes were more beneficial to wealthy Italians than poor ones. Bank officials maintained the analysis was purely technical and apolitical — “It was, like, two plus two,” one said in defense of Balassone — but it caused a storm in the right-wing, Meloni-supporting press. The Bank’s leadership worried that the government was not respecting the 132 year-old institution’s “traditions of independence,” said another.
Others see the amendment as being of a piece with a broader struggle against Italian officialdom: Francesco Galietti, a former Treasury official and the founder of political risk consultancy Policy Sonar, noted that in recent months, Meloni has pushed through a bill to rein in what she sees as a politicized judiciary, and also clashed with the head of state, President Sergio Mattarella, over an article that suggested he was plotting to prevent her from being reelected.
Malan himself insisted that the gold initiative was not directed “against anybody at all.” He nevertheless described the move as emblematic of the Brothers of Italy’s “battle” — without elaborating.
Broader play
Toothless though the bill is now, it still represents an interesting test case for how robustly the EU is willing to defend its laws against national governments who, across the continent, are becoming more and more erratic as they struggle with the constraints of economic stagnation and demographic decline.
Earlier this year, the European Commission stood by while Meloni’s government strong-armed UniCredit, one of Italy’s largest banks, into abandoning a takeover that didn’t suit it. EU antitrust authorities only launched an infringement procedure after UniCredit dropped its bid in frustration.
Reports also suggest that pressure from Rome is set to scupper a planned merger between the asset management arm of Generali, Italy’s largest insurer, with a French rival, out of fear that the new company would be a less reliable buyer of Italian government debt.