Avs brings Ilaria Salis to the European Parliament. The centrists remain outside
The Bonelli-Fratoianni alliance at 6.7%. Both Renzi and Calenda fail to pass the bar
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Key points
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Promos and failures of the election weekend. The Bonelli-Fratoianni duo rejoices, with the Avs alliance (Alliance Verdi Sinistra), which takes 6.7% of consensus (well beyond forecasts and polls) and gets Ilaria Salis elected. Great disappointment in the centre: failure both for Carlo Calenda and for the alliance between Matteo Renzi and Emma Bonino . This is the response of the European elections for the forces that had as their primary goal to exceed 4% of the consensus, the threshold that sanctions who is in and who is out of the European Parliament.
The election of Salis
.To Strasbourg will go Ilaria Salis , the Milanese activist of Sardinian origin detained in Hungary (under house arrest with an electronic bracelet), arrested on 11 February 2023 on charges of assaulting extreme right-wing exponents. She was a candidate with Avs in the North West and in the Islands. In the first constituency she obtained 110 thousand preferences (of which 64,839 in Lombardy), in the second about 54 thousand. 'Ilaria,' explained her father Roberto Salis, 'is not a normal candidate. She is still under house arrest and wearing an ankle bracelet. We must work to put an end to this ridiculous situation. She is there, innocent, she absolutely did not commit the acts for which she is accused. Now is the time to see Italian institutions doing what they should do to defend a citizen'.
Left over the threshold
.On the eve of the event, there was optimism in the Avs house about the possibility of reaching and exceeding the 4% threshold thanks to candidates such as Salis, able to bring to the vote people who usually abstain, but also Mimmo Lucano, Leoluca Orlando, Ignazio Marino. The list of the journalist Michele Santoro ('Peace, Land and Dignity') did not erode consensus for the Green-Left alliance, which made peace its warhorse and collected 2.2% without managing to elect its own representatives.
The final result of Avs thus exceeded expectations. 'This extraordinary and important result we must make sure can grow more and more,' said Sinistra Italiana leader Nicola Fratoianni. Who added: 'Ce n'est qu'un début, continuons le combat' ('It's only the beginning, let's keep fighting').
Centrists below the threshold and out of Parliament
Quite a different atmosphere among the former 'third parties': neither of the two centrist forces of Calenda and Renzi exceeded the 4% quorum. The sum of their consensus (1.5 million votes in total) would have guaranteed an entirely different result. But the relationship between the two now seems compromised.
