New Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, on Tuesday denied having “any sympathy” or closeness to anti-democratic regimes, including fascism.
“I have never had any sympathy or closeness to anti-democratic regimes, including fascism”he said during his maiden speech to the Chamber of Deputies.
Giorgia Meloni, who began her political career in the youth sections of the post-fascist Social Movement party, believed that the racial laws against Jews passed by the Benito Mussolini regime were “the lowest point” in Italian history.
In an interview given when he was 19, Meloni defended that Benito Mussolini was “a good politician” and that “everything he did, he did for Italy”.
Since then, however, the new Italian prime minister has tried to distance himself from that statement, even publishing a video during the September election campaign denouncing the fascism of dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s ally in World War II.
“We will fight against all forms of racism, anti-Semitism, political violence and discrimination”he added in a speech today, which lasted more than an hour and was punctuated by applause from the majority of the government, made up of his party and its two coalition partners, Liga and Força Italia.
The speech will be followed by a vote of confidence, which is the first step towards his inauguration.
In his presentation to parliament, Meloni also spoke about defending the environment, noting that “there is no more convinced environmentalist than a conservative”.
What he says is different is that a conservative “wants to defend nature with man in it. Combining environmental, economic and social sustainability”.
About the family, which has its own ministry in this executive branch, he explained that “an imposing plan, economically but also culturally, is planned to rediscover the beauty of fatherhood and to put the family back at the center of society. “.
His commitment, he said, is “to increase the amounts of grants for each child and help young couples get credit to buy their first home.”
Quoting Montesquieu, who said that “freedom is so good that you enjoy all other goods”, Meloni assured that “this center-right government will never limit the existing freedoms of citizens and businesses”.
“We’ll see when the facts are proven, including on civil rights and abortion, who lied and who spoke the truth in the election campaign about our true intentions,” Meloni added, referring to the critics who assured the party would change the abortion law when it came to government.
Prime Minister wants to prevent illegal migrants from leaving Africa with EU help
The Italian prime minister today defended, in her maiden speech to parliament, that the government plans to stop “the illegal departure” of migrants from Africa to Italy, adding that she will ask the European Union for help.
This government ‘wants to end illegal departures’ [de África] and end human trafficking” in the Mediterranean, defended Giorgia Meloni, explaining that she will ask the European Union (EU) to reinstate the naval operation Sophia, which involved a regular patrol of the Mediterranean between 2015 and 2020. carried out by aircraft Europeans with a view to dismantling networks of human traffickers.
“Our intention is to get back the original proposal from the European Union’s Sophia naval mission, which in the third phase envisaged, although this never happened, the blocking of ships’ departures from North Africa,” he explained.
“We intend to propose it at European level and implement it in agreement with the North African authorities, together with the establishment, in Africa, of identification centers, managed by international organizations, where it is possible to analyze asylum applications and to distinguish who has the right to be accepted in Europe”.
The new Italian prime minister assured that she does not intend “in any way to question the right to asylum of those fleeing war and persecution”, but rather to stop the traffickers.
Meloni criticized the “terrible inability to find adequate solutions to the various migration crises” of the past, recalling that “many men, women and children have died at sea trying to reach Italy”.
For this reason, he stated, “this government wants to follow a path that has not yet been taken: stop illegal departures and finally end human trafficking in the Mediterranean”.
The issue of migration, one of the most controversial in Italy, as the country has been one of the main gateways for illegal migrants to Europe in recent years, was part of the presentation of Giorgia Meloni’s government program to the Chamber of Members, who will vote on a vote of confidence even today.
The issue is all the more relevant given that one of the leaders of the ruling coalition parties, in the case of Liga’s Marreo Salvini, was a staunch opponent of immigration when he was interior minister.
Salvini is currently on trial for kidnapping and abuse of power for prohibiting the disembarkation of 147 migrants rescued by the organization vessel Open Arms in the Mediterranean in August 2019.
During the election campaign, Salvini went so far as to say that Italy was a safer country when he was in power and defended that asylum applications should be made in migration centers in North Africa and not in destination countries.
Source: DN
