Italian party competition over the European Union’s financial response to COVID-19: a claims analysis

This article examines the positions of Italian political parties on the European Union (EU)’s financial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on three key policy instruments that shaped the European public debate: Eurobonds, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and the Recovery Fund (or Recovery and Resilience Facility, RRF). Drawing on the literatures on the inverted U-curve, the responsibility-responsiveness (RR) dilemma, and cleavage politics, the study tests theory-driven hypotheses through a ‘claims analysis’ of Italian parties’ Facebook posts in the three months following the pandemic outbreak. The findings indicate that neither the mainstream/Eurosceptic divide nor a party’s government or opposition status fully explains Italian parties’ positions on the EU’s financial response to the crisis. Instead, party family affiliation emerges as the strongest explanatory factor. Parties within the same ideological family displayed similar positions on all three EU policy instruments and framed the EU’s financial response to COVID-19 primarily in opposition to parties from different ideological families. This supports cleavage theory and underscores that ideology remains the key determinant of both national party attitudes towards the EU and patterns of party competition over European issues.