(Bloomberg) -- Every couple of months, Silvio Berlusconi’s two eldest children get together with their late father’s longtime political fixer to kick around ideas.
Over a lunch of their favorite low-carb dishes, Marina and Pier Silvio Berlusconi set out for Gianni Letta their views on the economy, their business empire and the prospects for Forza Italia, the political party that helped Silvio Senior rule Italy for most of the 1990s and 2000s.
In the Berlusconi clan, politics and business were always intertwined. But since the passing of the patriarch and Forza Italia’s relegation to junior partner in Giorgia Meloni’s government, some observers have questioned whether the billionaire’s children are ready to move out of their corporate comfort zone. Marina already runs the family holding company Fininvest SpA and Pier Silvio is in charge of the media conglomerate MFE-MediaForEurope NV, formerly known as Mediaset.
Since late July, they’ve started to come up with an answer.
With the help of Letta, once known as Berlusconi’s Cardinal Richelieu, the Berlusconi heirs are sketching out a plan to restore Forza Italia to its former glory while chewing over Konjac pasta and white fish. And yes, that includes Letta, who turns 90 next year, but also Antonio Tajani, a senior figure in Meloni’s government as both her deputy and foreign minister.
What it demonstrates is that even beyond the grave, Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister still has the gravitational force to shape his country’s politics — albeit via his family and acolytes. When the country went to the polls this summer, Berlusconi’s face was there alongside Tajani’s on the giant posters plastered over Italian cities.
“The Berlusconis are preparing themselves,” said Giovanni Orsina, the head of the politics department at Luiss university in Rome. “If Meloni goes into crisis mode and a power vacuum emerges, we could even see one of them taking the field.”
Meloni herself served under Berlusconi in her early 30s and had hoped to absorb most of his center-right party’s support after becoming Italy’s first female leader in 2022. She still controls the governing coalition and her party, the Brothers of Italy, has maintained a clear lead in opinion polls.
But more than a year after Berlusconi’s death, Forza Italia is holding firm with around 10% of the vote and it is starting to get more assertive.
Marina, 58, and 55-year-old Pier Silvio meet regularly with Letta in an elegant neoclassical building in downtown Milan. Their lunches are a way to kick the tires on policy ideas, and they are getting more intense as cracks in the coalition begin to show, according to people with knowledge of those conversations. Pier Silvio, who lives in Portofino on the Italian Riviera, flies in by helicopter.
The late premier asked his son to take up the family’s political baton about a decade ago. Earlier this year Pier Silvio said he’s still tempted, but he’s committed to the broadcasting business. But there are rumblings in Rome that his reticence may not last.
The Berlusconi siblings are discussing with Tajani how to rejuvenate the aging party ranks, how to empower the wealthier middle classes of northern Italy, and how to challenge Meloni’s socially conservative leadership with more support for civil rights that include the LGBTQ+ community, while Tajani wants to explore easier routes to citizenship.
The Berlusconis have also made it clear to Meloni that another debacle like last year’s failed attempt to impose a new tax on bank profits has to be avoided at all costs, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said last week in an interview with Bloomberg that he instead plans instead a broader levy on companies that have benefitted from the economic turbulence of recent years.
“There will be a general call for everyone to contribute, not just banks,” Giorgetti said. “It will be reasoned and rational.”
Meloni for her part is seeking to stabilize her coalition after a bumpy few weeks. The 47-year-old premier cemented her authority during her first two years in office and hosted June’s Group of Seven leader’s summit. But since then she has taken some hits.
Her government has clashed with Italy’s intelligence services and with the League, a Russia-friendly coalition partner, over support for Ukraine. She’s picked fights with the European Union while Brussels scrutinizes Italy’s budget plans and made headlines last weekend after reportedly losing her temper over leaks of WhatsApp messages to her party's MPs. Last month, her culture minister was forced out after allegations he granted favors to a female entrepreneur. Both have denied wrongdoing.
The tensions between Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Forza Italia have also spilled into the public arena, with Tajani finding common cause with the center-left opposition on social issues.
The Berlusconis also look down on the leader of the League, Matteo Salvini.
The family didn’t appreciate Salvini’s decision to rename Milan’s intercontinental airport in honor of their patriarch, people familiar with the matter said, with Pier Silvio telling reporters pointedly that the timing hadn’t been ideal. They’ve also locked horns over one of their crown jewels — their television stations — and are irritated that Salvini is trying to win a bigger share of the advertising market for state broadcaster Rai, a direct competitor.
The Berlusconis are used to the spotlight after their father led four governments between 1994 and 2011. But Silvio left a complex legacy.
He was the precursor to the kind of populist politics that has disrupted mainstream parties across the western world in recent years, blending media spectacle and charisma — along with a dose of scandal, corruption allegations and endless trials.
His heirs see an opportunity to develop his right-of-center brand of politics by making it more liberal, more international, more progressive to appeal to a broader cast of voters.
In a symbol of that evolution, Pier Silvio has cut stalwart daytime host Barbara D’Urso from his main TV station and brought in left-wing journalist Bianca Berlinguer, the scion of the late communist leader Enrico, as he looks to include a wider variety of political views.
“Mediaset’s editorial policy has undergone small but significant changes — always in support of Forza Italia’s political role,” said Francesco Siliato, a senior media analyst at Studio Frasi.
With holdings in Banca Mediolanum SpA and Arnoldo Mondadori Editore SpA, the country's largest publisher, as well as their media interests, the Berlusconis move easily among Italy’s business elite. That sets them apart from the hard-right politicians around Meloni who’ve spent most of their careers shut out of the high-level business discussions in Rome and Milan.
Their inexperience was laid bare last year when Meloni’s government tried — and spectacularly failed — to impose a new tax on banks’ extra profits. The half-baked policy plans sent markets into a tailspin and were swiftly scuttled.
The Berlusconis, by contrast, create a very different impression and they caught the attention of the Italian press recently when former Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Letta were seen exiting Marina’s residence in Milan. Draghi had been touted as a potential president of Italy in 2022 and is rumored to be looking for a new role. The Berlusconis’ spokeswoman said the meeting was a long-planned opportunity to exchange views.
But the episode added to the sense that the billionaire clan is mobilizing behind the scenes. And Meloni’s team is on edge.
--With assistance from Jerrold Colten.
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