In about two months' time, European citizens will be voting on their representatives in the European Parliament. The majority that will be created within Parliament will also determine the leaders of the common institutions, starting with the European Commission, whose president should be the exponent of the winning party or coalition. The Parliament will play a decisive role also in approving the appointment of other members of the Commission, candidates from the national governments, a process that may offer many surprises, in consideration of the anti- European positions of some governments and the majorities required in the common parliamentary decisions. Finally, the next president of the European Central Bank will have to appear in front of the European Parliament and obtain approval that, while not binding, determines the mandate of an institution that is vital to the resilience of the Monetary Union.

For Italy, where the government has chosen to distance itself from its traditional partners, the political indications that are taking shape before the vote allude to the risk that the country will be isolated and in difficulty concerning issues of fiscal stability that mark its weakness. In these pages I try to describe the political scenario that the Italian government could be faced with in the autumn at the launch of the new Commission and the new leader of the ECB, coinciding with the Italian government’s difficult task of correcting the public accounts, which analysts consider to be decisive for the risk of financial instability linked to the increase of Italy’s public debt.

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