News Analysis: Gain of populist, Eurosceptic forces in Italy's regional vote shows similar with Spain

The large round of regional elections held in Italy on Sunday delivered disappointing results for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD), with two major populist and anti-euro forces showing a positive performance in crucial areas of the country.

Center-left candidates backed by PD actually won governor posts in 5 of the 7 regions involved in the ballot, but suffered a setback in northwestern and traditionally leftist Liguria, where center-right candidate Giovanni Toti of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party scored a clear victory.

Yet, even more troubling for Italy's prime minister and his ruling party was the clear advance of the Northern League party and the Five Star Movement, local media highlighted on Monday.

Anti-immigration Northern League easily confirmed its sitting governor, Luca Zaia, in the northeastern wealthy Veneto region, and made a big advance in central Tuscany and Umbria.

Anti-euro Five Star Movement (M5S) candidates gathered more than 20 percent of the votes in Liguria and Marche, and improved their performance in 6 regions out of 7.

Since both forces distinguish themselves for being anti-establishment, and both voice a criticism towards the European Union (EU) often bordering on Euroscepticism, a comparison with recent results of local polls in other EU countries such as Spain and France easily came to mind.

"A common factor can surely be found in the recent local elections in Italy and Spain," Federico Niglia, professor of International European History with LUISS University of Rome, told Xinhua.

"It is the ease with which movements born out of civil societies (such as anti-austerity Podemos in Spain and M5S in Italy) were able to build streamlined and successful political structures."

"What I also see in both countries is the long wave of the criticism against EU institutions, which had already emerged in European parliament elections last year," he added.

According to the analyst, labelling all the advancing forces simply as "anti-establishment" might not be fair, since the millions of European citizens who voted for them would have made a call for the EU not to shrink back, but rather to develop a stronger political dimension.

"The main criticism against EU institutions by most of these movements is that the 'use' of European powers is too bureaucratic and too focused on economy, without a comprehensive political platform on which people could really make their choice," Niglia explained.

Citizens would want to deliberate on the basis of political projects, and not only according to economic and administrative principles, which seems to be the case now with major EU policies.

On the other hand, the analyst found no real similarities between the latest vote in Italy and that of France, where Marie Le Pen's far-right Front National party made large gains in local elections in March.

"I really do not agree with the similitude often made between Front National and Northern League especially, because the two parties have very different cultural roots and ideologies," he said.

Their political proposal might sound similar, but is not, and their advance within France and Italy's political landscapes, respectively, would not have the same meaning at domestic or EU level.

"French Front National is a nationalist party to the core, while Italian Northern League was born as a local entity to answer a specific malaise of Northern Italy, and is now struggling hard to become a nation-wide party," Niglia said. Endit