As many as 100,000 protestors have marched in Rome against European Union rearmament plans, which polls have indicated were unusually unpopular in Italy.
Europe should focus on “building roads to peace” with Russia, said former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, whose opposition Five Star Movement (M5S) organised the demonstration over the weekend of April 5.
He described as “madness” an EU rearmament plan, which he said “squanders €800 billion and pushes Europe into a war economy”.
Just 49 per cent of Italians have supported an EU boost in defence spending, compared to 73 per cent across the EU, a number that rose to 79 per cent in Germany and 76 per cent in France.
While Conte’s left-wing Five Star Movement organised the protest, leading politicians also took part from other Italian opposition parties, including the Democratic Party and the Green-Left Alliance.
From a Democratic Party that has been internally divided over the rearmament plan, Senate spokesperson Francesco Boccia attended, while party leader Elly Schlein was notably absent.
Schlein indicated she agreed on some points with the protesters but not on others. Two of Italy’s centrist parties, Azione and Italia Viva, also did not take part.
The Green and Left alliance leaders Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli both attended, as well as groups representing the Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia (an anti-fascist organisation dating back to 1945) and Greenpeace.
“We are very pacifist, we are naturally here and we see this as an important step to create the alternative to the government,” said Fratoianni.
It represented a new set of alignments for the popular Five Star opposition movement whose leader Conte in October severed ties with the movement’s founder, comedian Beppe Grillo, following a bitter split.
The organisers described the demonstration, which began at Rome’s Piazza Vittorio and made its way to the Fori Imperiali, as attracting “unexpected numbers, beyond all expectations”. Sources outside the Five Star Movement estimated the number of participants at 80,000.
Conte offered stinging criticism of both Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, saying Meloni “has sold out Italy to the needs of Germany”.
The PM, he said, “approved Europe’s rearmament plan without any mandate, and this is another failure of her government that will remain in history”.
The Five Star Movement garnered 33 per cent of the vote in 2018 but its support has fallen off dramatically sincce. In an October 2024 regional election in Liguria, fewer than 5 per cent of voters backed the party.
By dividing the opposition to the three-party governing coalition, Conte’s party has helped to ensure that Meloni stayed in office.
Its on-again, off-again relationship with the Democratic Party, Italy’s left-leaning main opposition party, has in particular hobbled hopes for Italy’s opposition.
Conte’s opposition to military support for Ukraine, though, has made the Five Star Movement a difficult partner for the Democratic Party to countenance.
A response from the governing coalition came from Antonio Tajani, the foreign minister and leader of the Forza Italia party.
“I don’t understand what the M5s want, they want peace but in government Conte devoted more money to defence,” Tajani told members of his party elsewhere in Rome.
Under Conte, his party has increasingly adopted an anti-Atlanticist stance, criticising Meloni for Italy’s departure from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Meloni’s defenders pointed out that since joining the Beijing initiative, Italy’s trade deficit with China had increased to $47 billion, while France, which remained outside the BRI, secured better deals nonetheless, including a €30 billion agreement between China and France’s Airbus.
Conte has attempted to position the party, previously a populist movement whose underlying politics were at times difficult to pin down, as a more conventional progressive party, to the Left of Schlein’s PD on issues including a basic guaranteed income and minimum wage.
These efforts took their toll on Conte’s relationship with Grillo, who began to accuse Conte as having sold out to a corrupt, privileged elite the party was meant to oppose.
No al Riarmo. Forte e chiaro. #fermiamoli pic.twitter.com/91ZDKmXJZQ
— Giuseppe Conte (@GiuseppeConteIT) April 5, 2025
