The Brothers of Italy take the fight to Florence
The city is an opposition stronghold
It is barely ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, yet Eike Schmidt has drawn nearly a hundred attentive listeners to a pizzeria in Le Cascine, a large park on the edge of Florence. But then the German-born Mr Schmidt is the most unusual mayoral candidate in the local elections in Italy that coincide with its European Parliament election on June 8th and 9th. Pink-faced and tall but paunchy, he is every inch a son of his native Freiburg. His Italian, though grammatically impeccable, is slightly accented and occasionally hesitant.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “From Uffizi to office?”
Europe June 1st 2024
- The rise of the hard right threatens Europe’s political stability
- Hard-right populists are pushing their way into the mainstream
- The Brothers of Italy take the fight to Florence
- Georgia’s government cosies up to Russia
- Ukraine’s desperate draft-dodgers drown in the river of death
- Ceci n’est pas un divorce: why surging separatism won’t break Belgium
From the June 1st 2024 edition
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