AAt the weekend there will be elections in Italy. Mario Draghi will no longer be prime minister after that, recalling that Germany is an ally of Italy, and Dario Franceschini is expected to be replaced as culture minister. If the election forecasts are correct, the new prime minister will be Giorgia Meloni. A coalition of her post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, Salvini’s right-wing nationalist Lega and Berlusconi’s Christian-democratic Forza Italia would then run the country’s fortunes, with close ties to the Orbán government. Italy could therefore lose its role in Europe. Dark times would also dawn for the Italian cultural world.
At Meloni’s appearances and those of the other candidates of the centre-right alliance, one mostly waited in vain for the word “culture”. Only a short section is dedicated to it in the party alliance’s election manifesto (section no. 10, after infrastructure, justice, taxes, family and birth rate, security and immigration). It is entitled “Made in Italy, culture and tourism” and reads as if it had been written by advisers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Economy: culture appears in it above all as a lure for tourism, one of the country’s most important economic sectors.