Social media users have made an unfounded connection between the resignation of four European politicians and the collapse of the Italian government.
“KABOOOOOM!!! Are you sitting down? 1. The entire Netherlands government has resigned 2. Angela Merkel stepping down 3. Estonia Prime Minister missing 4. Italian government has collapsed. The declass on Obama gate today!”, one iteration of the post reads (here).
Other examples can be seen (here , here).
But two of these events are not actually unexpected or unusual, and there is no credible evidence to link any of them together.
The resignation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, was announced several years ago.
In 2018, Merkel said that she would not run for a fifth term (here), a decision that the chancellor has stood by over the years (here).
Meanwhile the collapse of the Italian government was not completely unexpected.
In January, Italy’s former premier Matteo Renzi pulled his small party out of government, causing the ruling coalition to be stripped of its parliamentary majority (here).
The move came after repeated clashes between Renzi and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte over his handling of COVID-19 and the recession.
Such collapses happen relatively often in Italy, which has a history of forming governments using unstable coalitions.
Since World War Two, Italy has had 66 governments (here), and even Conte’s first government unravelled only a year after it was first formed (here).
Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas did not go missing, as some of the posts claim, but instead resigned over an inquiry into property development (here).
He has been replaced by Kaja Kallas who has become Estonia’s first female prime minister (here).
It is true that the government of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte resigned following a damning report on his cabinet's handling of childcare subsidies (here).
The government currently has a caretaker status, and Rutte has said that he will remain to take decisions on COVID-19 policies until a new government is formed after the elections in March.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that this, or any of the other events discussed, are in some way connected to each other.
VERDICT
Missing context. Angela Merkel announced she would resign several years ago. The collapse of the Italian government is not without precedent. The Estonian PM did not go missing, but resigned over an inquiry into property development. The government of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte quit over a report into the handling of childcare subsidies. There is no evidence that any of these events are linked.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
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February 02, 2021 at 04:18PM
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Fact check: No link between resignation of four European politicians and collapse of Italian government - Reuters
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