ABSTRACT
The 2019 Italian European Parliament election took place about a year after national election and was widely considered the first nationwide test for the first fully populist government in EU history. This chapter draws upon new data from the RECONNECT 2019 EP election panel survey to evaluate the extent to which the 2019 Italian EP election more closely resembled a genuinely European, first-order contest. The evidence presented suggests that the election possessed many of the features typical of a second-order election, especially in terms of the dominance of domestic issues and the lack of interest in EU issues during the election campaign. Yet, while the EP election was second-order in itself, it represented an important test of the political ‘strength’ of the two governing parties in a difficult coalition government partnership and contributed to the break-up of the government a few months after. The evidence in this chapter also clearly indicates that citizen support for European integration is declining in Italy, with many Italians no longer considering the EU as a problem-solver but rather see it as a problem in itself.
