Lega, Zaia launches the German model: a federalist party to give more space to the territories

On the one hand, a party allied in the Europarliament with the sovereignist right. On the other, the territorial instances gathered by a ruling class linked above all to the historical autonomist northern question. How to make a synthesis between these two drives while the presence of General Vannacci becomes increasingly 'heavy' within the League? Secretary Matteo Salvini provided a key to interpretation when he declared that 'being autonomist and federalist in Italy and sovereignist in Europe is natural, it is logical'. A step forward was taken by the Veneto governor Luca Zaia when he claimed a federalist structure for the Carroccio, on the model of the Cdu-Csu in Germany. An 'organisational model' that Salvini himself said he had discussed with the Veneto governor, describing it as 'very interesting'.

Cdu (Christian Democratic Union of Germany) and Csu (Christian Social Union in Bavaria) are the twin Christian Democrat parties that form a single parliamentary group in the Bundestag in Germany. And they are both standing in federal elections, although they do not compete with each other, the Csu being active only in Bavaria and the Cdu in all the other 15 Länder. The hypothesis circulated in recent days of two separate and allied Leagues, one in the North (heir to Padania and more linked to the autonomist demands of the North) and one in the Centre-South, freer to move to the right with Vannacci, with Salvini as federating secretary, remains more a suggestion than a concrete prospect. Even if in the middle of the past decade the Carroccio experienced a season of 'splitting' with the Northern League on the one hand and the Noi con Salvini party as a political entity supporting the secretary in Central and Southern Italy.

What is being worked on for the moment is a different type of internal organisation, to give more space and voice to the territories. A direction of travel of which the Lombardy Charter launched by the Lombardy secretary Massimiliano Romeo, group leader in the Senate, is in some ways a 'precursor' document: wages partly differentiated on the basis of the cost of living, energy autonomy, special powers for Milan in the wake of those approved in the Cdm for Rome Capital. Territorial demands at the centre, in fact.

'The idea that I also sketched out at the Lega Lombarda congress last December,' says Romeo, 'is that of a national League on the one hand that carries on common battles on issues such as security, the flat tax, freedom of expression, and the fight against illegal immigration. And of federated territorial Leagues and no longer mere local branches, capable of better representing and enhancing the different sensitivities and identities, from the North, the Centre, and the South'.