ROME — A European humanitarian group said Wednesday its migrant rescue ship was heading to the French island of Corsica in hopes France will offer its 234 passengers a safe port, as a diplomatic standoff intensified after Italy relented and allowed migrants from three other rescue ships to disembark on Italian soil.
The European Commission added to the pressure to find a safe port for the Ocean Viking, issuing a statement late Wednesday demanding that the passengers — some of whom have been at sea for nearly three weeks — be allowed to immediately disembark “at the nearest place of safety.”
The statement was unusual since the Commission hasd remained quiet on the drama all week, refusing to get involved except to restate that it’s up to member countries to handle search and rescue operations and disembarkation matters, not Brussels.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni had jumped the gun and announced Tuesday that France had agreed to take the Ocean Viking in, even though the government had made no such pledge publicly. As of late Wednesday, France still had not offered a port, but Francesco Creazzo of the SOS Mediterranee group said the Norwegian-flagged ship was hoping it would eventually do so.
Officials in both Corsica and the French port city of Marseille said they would gladly take them in.
Meloni’s premature announcement of a French agreement prompted the French government spokesman to publicly criticize the Italian maneuvering on public radio Wednesday.
Spokesman Olivier Veran told France Info radio that the Ocean Viking “is intended to be welcomed in Italy” since it was in Italian territorial waters and said Italy’s refusal to allow passengers to disembark was “unacceptable.”
Since Italy is the top beneficiary of the European Union financial solidarity system, he demanded that “Italy plays its role and respects its European commitments.”
By late Tuesday, the remaining passengers on three other humanitarian-operated ships that Italy had initially refused to take in had disembarked at Italian ports. The last was the Humanity 1, operated by the SOS Humanity group, which disembarked its 35 passengers in the Sicilian port of Catania.
There was no immediate explanation for Italy’s U-turn, but legal experts and the humanitarian groups noted that under maritime law, all people found at sea in distress are entitled to access the closest safe port where they can then apply for asylum.
Meloni’s hard-right government had initially only allowed migrants deemed “vulnerable” to disembark, and intended to send the rest of the passengers back out to sea. But the two ships that docked at Catania for the vulnerability selection process — the Humanity 1 and the Geo Berents — refused to leave port.
Italian news reports on Wednesday quoted Meloni as telling her Brothers of Italy lawmakers that she found it “surreal” that doctors who visited the migrants on the docked ships Tuesday had declared them all fragile and at risk of psychological distress — presumably the medical determination that allowed for them all to disembark. Meloni insisted the passengers were migrants, not shipwreck survivors.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi had adopted measures saying the flag country of each charity-operated ship was responsible for providing a safe port, not Italy. Charity groups, however, said the measure patently violated maritime law and some had launched legal action against the government.
“We are relieved that the people can go ashore and that all those rescued from distress at sea have finally been assigned a place of safety, as required by maritime law,” said SOS Humanity’s Till Rummenhohl, who is in charge of ship operations for the Humanity 1. “However, we are appalled by the blatant disregard of the law and of human rights by Italian authorities.”
Meloni was defiant about Italy’s hard line. In the statement prematurely announcing a French decision to open its port to the Ocean Viking, she said it was important to “continue this line of European collaboration with the countries most exposed to find a shared solution.”
“The immigration emergency is a European issue and must be dealt with as such, with full respect of human rights and the principle of legality,” she said.
In Marseille, Mayor Benoit Payan urged the government in Paris to open a port to the Ocean Viking and said his city would be honored to take the migrants in.
“The castaways, children, women and men aboard the Ocean Viking, must be rescued,” he tweeted.
“France must open a port urgently and assume its responsibilities,” Payan said. “Marseille, faithful to its history, is ready.”
Corsica, too, said it was prepared to do its part.
“It’s a simple and a basic duty of humanity,” tweeted Gilles Simeoni, president of the executive council on the French Mediterranean island.
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Surk reported from Nice, France; Lorne Cook reported from Brussels.
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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
ROME (AP) — Italian authorities on Tuesday announced the extraordinary discovery of 2,000-year-old bronze statues in an ancient Tuscan thermal spring and said the find will “rewrite history” about the transition from the Etruscan civilization to the Roman Empire.
The discovery, in the sacred baths of the San Casciano dei Bagni archaeological dig near Siena, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean and certainly the most important since the 1972 underwater discovery of the famed Riace bronze warriors, said Massimo Osanna, the Culture Ministry’s director of museums.
Thanks to the mud that protected them, the two-dozen figurines and other bronze objects were found in a perfect state of conservation, bearing delicate facial features, inscriptions and rippled tunics. Alongside the figures were 5,000 coins in gold, silver and bronze, the ministry said.
As evidence of the importance of the find, the ministry announced the construction of a new museum in the area to house the antiquities.
The discovery, in the sacred baths of the San Casciano dei Bagni archaeological dig near Siena, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean,
Jacopo Tabolli, who coordinated the dig for the University for Foreigners in Siena, said the discovery was significant because it sheds new light on the end of the Etruscan civilization and the expansion of the Roman Empire in today’s central Italy between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.
The period was marked by wars and conflicts across what is today’s Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio regions, and yet, the bronze statues show evidence that Etruscan and Roman families prayed together to deities in the sacred sanctuary of the thermal springs.
The statues, including depictions of Apollo and Igea, the ancient Greek god and goddess of health, bear both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions.
“While there were social and civil wars being fought outside the sanctuary … inside the sanctuary the great elite Etruscan and Roman families prayed together in a context of peace surrounded by conflict,” Tabolli said. “This possibility to rewrite the relationship and dialectic between the Etruscan and Romans is an exceptional opportunity.”
Thanks to the mud that protected them, the two-dozen figurines and other bronze objects were found in a perfect state of conservation.
Some of the two dozen bronzes are entire human-like figures of deities, while others are of individual body parts and organs which would have been offered up as votive offerings to the gods for intervention for medical cures via the thermal waters, the ministry said in a statement.
“This is almost an X-ray of the human insides from the lungs to the intestines,” said Osanna, gesturing to a lung at the restoration laboratory where the bronzes are being treated. “There are ears and other anatomical parts like hands. So, all these things that curative waters and the intervention of the divinities would have been able to save.”
Some of the two dozen bronzes are entire human-like figures of deities, while others are of individual body parts and organs which would have been offered up as votive offerings to the gods.
The find represents the largest deposit of bronzes from this era in Italy, notable also because most surviving antiquities from the period are primarily in terracotta, the ministry said.
“It’s a discovery that will rewrite history,” Tabolli said in a statement.
The discovery comes 50 years after the Riace bronze warriors were found by a recreational diver in the waters off southern Calabria and went onto become one of Italy’s most spectacular archaeological finds. The 5th century bronzes, currently on display at the national archaeological museum in Reggio Calabria, feature two naked life-sized and life-like Greek warriors, with rippled muscles and intricate, curly beards.
A strong earthquake of magnitude 5.7 struck off Italy’s Adriatic coast early on Wednesday, but caused no serious damage or injuries, according to initial reports.
The quake happened shortly after 7 a.m. (1 a.m. ET), and was felt as far away as Rome on the other side of the country, and in the northern regions of Veneto, Friuli and Trentino.
“No injuries at the moment,” a spokesman for Italy’s Civil Protection told Reuters, as the agency tweeted that checks on the ground were continuing.
The quake’s epicenter was at 35 kilometers (22 miles) offshore from Pesaro, a seaside city in the eastern Marche region, at a depth of 7 kilometers (4 miles), the Italian Geophysics and Volcanology Institute (INGV) said.
As a precaution, schools in Pesaro and other nearby cities were closed, and rail traffic passing through Pesaro along the Adriatic coast was suspended.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said she was “in constant contact” with Civil Protection authorities and the head of the Marche region to follow developments.
A German humanitarian group says its ship has docked in southern Italy and disembarked all 89 people rescued at sea, ending one migrant rescue saga as others continue under Italy’s new hard-right government
ROME — A German humanitarian group said its ship docked in southern Italy early Tuesday and disembarked 89 people rescued at sea, ending one migrant rescue saga as others continue under Italy’s new hard-right government.
Mission Lifeline posted videos on social media of the 25-meter (80-foot) Rise Above freighter docking in Reggio Calabria and said the “odyssey of 89 passengers and nine crew members on board seems to be over.” In a subsequent post it said all 89 were allowed to disembark.
The group had waited at sea for days for Italy to assign it a port after it entered Italian waters over the weekend without consent because of rough seas. Six of the original 95 people were evacuated at sea for medical reasons.
Italy has refused to assign migrant rescue ships with a port of safety as the new far-right-led government of Premier Giorgia Meloni takes a hard line with nongovernmental organizations operating in the central Mediterranean. Instead, it has been instructing them to ports, where authorities allow only vulnerable people to disembark.
Italian authorities insist the boats must then return to international waters with those not deemed vulnerable and that the countries whose flag the ships fly take the migrants in.
Two NGO-run boats are docked in Catania, in Sicily, one with 35 people that Italy won’t allow to disembark, the other with 214 people. Both ships are refusing to leave, saying that under international law all people rescued at sea are vulnerable and entitled to a safe port.
A fourth ship, the Ocean Viking operated by SOS Mediterranee, remains in international waters off Sicily with 234 rescued people. Its first rescue was 17 days ago.
There is mounting anxiety about what Tuesday’s American midterm elections may mean for Ukraine and U.S. support for the country, amid fears that a Republican surge could weaken American backing for Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials and lawmakers are scrutinizing the opinion polls and parsing the comments of their counterparts.
“We hope that for our sake that we don’t become a victim to the partisan debate that’s unfolding right now in the U.S.,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a former Ukrainian deputy prime minister and now opposition lawmaker, told POLITICO. “That’s the fear, because we are very much seriously dependent on not only American support, but also on the U.S. leadership in terms of keeping up the common effort of other nations.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the potential next speaker if the Republicans prevail, said last month that there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine if the House comes back under Republican control. The Biden administration has tried to assuage concerns about the government’s commitment to supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, but populist Republican sentiment in Congress is urging less support for Kyiv and more attention on U.S. domestic problems.
“I’m worried about the Trump wing of the GOP,” said Mia Willard, a Ukrainian-American living and working in Kyiv. “I have recently read about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s promise that ‘not another penny will go to Ukraine’ if Republicans retake control of Congress.”
According to the latest poll data, the Republicans are favored to take over the House and possibly the Senate in Tuesday’s voting.
“I do hope that regardless of the election results,” said Willard, “there will be a continued bipartisan consensus on supporting Ukraine amid Russia’s genocide of the Ukrainian people, which I cannot call anything but a genocide after firsthand witnessing Russia’s war crimes in the now de-occupied territories,” said Willard, who is a researcher at the International Centre for Policy Studies in the Ukrainian capital.
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin is confident that U.S. military and financial support for his country will continue after the midterms. “I don’t see a critical number of people among the Republicans calling for cuts in aid,” he told POLITICO. At the same time, Klimkin acknowledged that the procedure for congressional consideration of Ukraine aid may become more complex.
Klimkin said he believes that the U.S. stance toward Ukraine is “critical” for Washington beyond the Ukrainian conflict — “not only with respect to Russia, but also to how the U.S. will be perceived by China.”
Voters line up outside the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections center in Cleveland, Ohio | Dustin Franz/AFP via Getty Images
For Ukraine, Klimkin said the “real risk” is the debate taking place in Washington on both sides of the aisle about the fact that “the United States is giving much more than all of Europe” to Kyiv’s war effort.
According to the Kiel Institute of the World Economy, the U.S. has brought its total commitments in military, financial and humanitarian aid to over €52 billion, while EU countries and institutions have collectively reached just over €29 billion.
“The U.S. is now committing nearly twice as much as all EU countries and institutions combined. This is a meager showing for the bigger European countries, especially since many of their pledges are arriving in Ukraine with long delays,” said Christoph Trebesch, head of the team compiling the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine support tracker.
Europe’s stance
If the Republicans prevail in Tuesday’s vote, the anxiety is also that without U.S. leadership, Ukraine would slip down the policy agenda of Europe, too, depriving Ukraine of the backing the country needs for “victory over the Russian monster,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
If the worst happened and U.S. support weakens following the midterms, Klympush-Tsintsadze said she has some hopes that Europe would still stand firm. She has detected in Europe “much more sobriety in the assessment of what Russia is and what it can do, and I hope there would be enough voices there in Europe, too, to ensure there’s no weakening of support,” she said.
Others are less sanguine about how stout and reliable the Europeans would be without Washington goading and galvanizing.Several officials and lawmakers pointed to the Balkan wars of the 1990s and how the Clinton administration stood back, arguing the Europeans should take the lead only to have to intervene diplomatically and militarily later.
“We in Ukraine have been watching closely the developments in the USA and what configuration the Congress will have after the midterm elections,” said Iuliia Osmolovska, chair of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center and a senior fellow at GLOBSEC, a global think-tank headquartered in Bratislava.
A local resident rides a bicycle on a street in Izyum, eastern Ukraine on September 14, 2022 | Juan Barreto/AFP via Getty Images)
“This might impact the existing determination of the U.S. political establishment to continue supporting Ukraine, foremost militarily. Especially given voices from some Republicans that call for freezing the support to Ukraine,” she said.
But Osmolovska remains hopeful, noting that “Ukraine has been enjoying bipartisan support in the war with Russia since the very first days of the invasion in February this year.” She also believes President Joe Biden would have wiggle room to act more independently when it comes to military assistance to Ukraine without seeking approval from Congress thanks to legislation already on the books.
But she doesn’t exclude “the risk of some exhaustion” from allies, arguing that Ukraine needs to redouble diplomacy efforts to prevent that from happening. What needs to be stressed, she said, is that “our Western partners only benefit from enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia as soon as possible” — as a protracted conflict is in no one’s interest.
“There’s a feeling in the air that we’re winning in the war, although it is far from over,” said Glib Dovgych, a software engineer in Kyiv.
“If the flow of money and equipment goes down, it won’t mean our defeat, but it will mean a much longer war with much higher human losses. And since many other allies are looking at the U.S. in their decisions to provide support to us, if the U.S. decreases the scale of their help, other countries like Germany, France and Italy would probably follow suit,” Dovgych said.
Yaroslav Azhnyuk, president and co-founder of Petcube, a technology company that develops smart devices for pets, says “it’s obvious that opinions on how to end Russia’s war on Ukraine are being used for internal political competition within the U.S.”
He worries about the influence on American political opinion also of U.S.-based entrepreneurs and investors, mentioning David Sacks, Elon Musk and Chamath Palihapitiya, among others. “They have publicly shared concerning views, saying that Ukraine should cede Crimea to Russia, or that the U.S. should stop supporting Ukraine to avoid a global nuclear war.”
Azhnyuk added: “I get it, nukes are scary. But what happens in the next 5-10 years after Ukraine cedes any piece of its territory or the conflict is frozen. Such a scenario would signal to the whole world that nuclear terrorism works.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that regardless of the results of the U.S. midterms, Kyiv is “confident” that bipartisan support for Ukraine will remain in both chambers of the Congress. Both the Republicans and Democrats have voiced their solidarity with Ukraine, and this stance would remain “a reflection of the will of the American people,” he said.
The Ukrainian side counts on America’s leadership in important issues of defense assistance, in particular in expanding the capacity of the Ukrainian air defense system, financial support, strengthening sanctions against Moscow, and recognizing Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, Podolyak told POLITICO.
And this isn’t just about Ukraine, said Klympush-Tsintsadze, the former deputy premier.
“Too many things in the world depend on this war,” she said. “It’s not only about restoring our territorial integrity. It’s not only about our freedom and our chance for the future, our survival as a nation and our survival as a country — it will have drastic consequences for the geopolitics of the world,” Klympush-Tsintsadze said.
CATANIA, Sicily (AP) — The captain of a charity-run migrant rescue ship refused Italian orders to leave a Sicilian port Sunday after authorities refused to let 35 of the migrants on his ship disembark — part of directives by Italy’s new far-right-led government targeting foreign-flagged rescue ships.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s two-week-old government is refusing safe port to four ships operating in the central Mediterranean that have rescued migrants at sea in distress, some as many as 16 days ago, and is allowing only those identified as vulnerable to disembark.
On Sunday, Italy ordered the Humanity 1 to vacate the port of Catania after disembarking 144 rescued migrants, including with children, more than 100 unaccompanied minors and people with medical emergencies.
But its captain refused to comply “until all survivors rescued from distress at sea have been disembarked,” said SOS Humanity, the German charity that operates the ship. The vessel remained moored at the port with 35 migrants on board.
Later Sunday, a second charity ship arrived in Catania, and the vetting process was being repeated with the 572 migrants aboard the Geo Barents ship operated by Doctors Without Borders. The selection was completed by late evening, with 357 allowed off but 215 people blocked on board.
Families were the first to leave the ship. One man cradling a baby expressed his gratitude, saying “Thank you, Geo Barents, thank you,” as he left. Another man in a wheelchair was carried down by Red Cross workers.
Yet two other boats run by non-governmental organizations remained stuck at sea with no port willing to accept the people they rescued.
Humanitarian groups, human rights activists and two Italian lawmakers who traveled to Sicily protested the selection process as illegal and inhumane. Italy’s new Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi is targeting non-governmental organizations, which Italy has long accused of encouraging people trafficking in the central Mediterranean Sea. The groups deny the claim.
“Free all the people, free them,″ Italian lawmaker Aboubakar Soumahoro said in an emotional appeal directed at Meloni from the Humanity 1 rescue ship.
The passengers have faced ”trauma, they have faced everything that we can define as prolonged suffering,” said Soumahoro, who spent the night on the ship.
Later at the port, he accused Meloni of playing politics at the expense of “newborns, of women, of people who have suffered traumas of all kinds,” including torture in Libyan prisons.
He said neither translators nor psychologists were on hand during Italy’s selection process and many of the migrants were from Gambia, unable to speak French, English or Italian.
“Their fault is to speak another language. Their fault is to have another color,″ Soumahoro said, accusing the Italian government of using the migrants to distract from other issues, including high energy prices.
Aboard the Humanity 1, doctors in Italy identified people needing urgent medical care after the ship’s doctor refused to make a selection, said SOS Humanity spokesman Wasil Schauseil. Thirty-six people were declared non-vulnerable and were not permitted to disembark, prompting one to collapse and be taken away by an ambulance.
“You can imagine the condition of the people. It is very devastating,″ he said.
Both SOS Humanity and Doctors Without Borders issued statements declaring that all of their passengers were vulnerable after being rescued at sea, and deserving of a safe port under international law. SOS Humanity said it plans to file a civil case in Catania to ensure that all 35 survivors on board have access to formal asylum procedures on land.
Doctors Without Borders emphasized that “a rescue operation is considered complete only when all of the survivors have been disembarked in a safe place.”
Two other charity ships carrying rescued migrants remained stuck at sea, with people sleeping on floors and decks and spreading respiratory infections and scabies as food and medical supplies drew low.
The German-run Rise Above, carrying 93 rescued at sea, sought a more protected position in the waters east of Sicily due to the weather, but spokeswoman Hermine Poschmann said Sunday that the crew had not received any communications from Italian authorities.
Poschmann described cramped conditions on the relatively small 25-meter (82-foot) ship.
The Ocean Viking, operated by the European charity SOS Mediteranee, with 234 migrants on board, remained in international waters, south of the Strait of Messina, and got no instructions to proceed to an Italian port, a spokesman said Sunday. Its first rescue was 16 days ago.
“Agitation is evident among the survivors,″ a charity worker named Morgane told The Associated Press on Sunday. Cases of seasickness were soaring after high waves tossed the ship through the night.
“Today, the weather considerably deteriorated, bringing strong winds, rough seas and rain on deck. … these extreme conditions added suffering,” she said.
The confrontational stance taken by Meloni’s government is reminiscent of the standoffs orchestrated by Matteo Salvini, now Meloni’s infrastructure minister in charge of ports, during his brief 2018-2019 stint as interior minister. Italy’s new government is insisting the countries whose flags the charity-run ships fly must take in the migrants.
In a Facebook video, Salvini repeated his allegations that the presence of the humanitarian boats encourages smugglers.
Nongovernmental organizations reject that claim, saying they are obligated by the law of the sea to rescue people in distress and that coastal nations are obligated to provide a safe port as soon as feasible.
Amnesty International called Italy’s stance “disgraceful.”
“Italy legitimately expects other EU member states to share responsibility for people seeking asylum, but this does not justify imposing measures that only increase the suffering of already traumatized people,” the group said.
Colleen Barry reported from Milan. Emily Schultheis contributed from Berlin and Angela Charlton from Paris.
Delegates landing in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh for U.N. climate talks this week are a global elite bent on tearing down national borders, stripping away individual freedoms and condemning working people to a life of poverty.
That dark view is held by a range of far-right or populist parties — among them Donald Trump’s Republicans, who are seeking to retake control in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Some of these radicals are rampaging through elections in Europe while others, such as Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro last week, have been defeated only narrowly.
Republican and Trump acolyte Lauren Boebert derides the environmentalist agenda as “America last;” Britain’s Brexit-backing Home Secretary Suella Braverman says the country is in thrall to a “tofu-eating wokerati;” and in Spain, senior figures in the far-right Vox party dismiss the U.N.’s climate agenda as “cultural Marxism.”
Right-wingers of various strains around the world have co-opted climate change into their culture war. The fact this is happening in countries that produce a large share of global greenhouse gas emissions has alarmed some green advocates.
“Reactionary populism is now the biggest obstacle to tackling climate change,” wrote three climate leaders, including Brazil’s former Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira, in a recent commentary.
In the U.S., Republicans are eyeing a return to power in one or both houses of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Many at the COP27 talks will be reliving the first week of the U.N. climate conference in Morocco six years ago when Trump’s election struck the climate movement like a hurricane.
A Republican surge would gnaw at the fragile confidence that has built around global climate efforts since President Joe Biden’s election, raising the specter of a second Trump term and perhaps the withdrawal — again — of the U.S. from the landmark 2015 Paris climate deal.
“I don’t want to think about that,” said Teixeira’s co-author Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who led the design of the Paris Agreement and who now leads the European Climate Foundation.
Some on the American right are pushing a more conciliatory message than others. “Republicans have solutions to reduce world emissions while providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy to our allies across the globe,” said Utah Congressman John Curtis, who will lead a delegation from his party to COP27.
Tubiana and others in the environmental movement are trying to put on a brave face. They argue Republicans won’t want to tamper too much with Biden’s behemoth Inflation Reduction Act, which contains measures to promote clean energy.
“You might see railing against it, and I’m sure there’ll be lots of political talk and rhetoric, but I don’t expect that would be a focus for the Republicans,” said Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, a green NGO based in Arlington, Virginia. Nevertheless, if Republicans take both houses, “we certainly won’t make any progress,” Keohane said.
Trump’s first term and the presidency of Brazil’s Bolsonaro — which ended in a narrow defeat in last month’s election — now look like the opening skirmishes in a struggle in which the planet’s stability is at stake.
In parts of Europe, the right present their policies as sympathetic to the risks of climate change while dismissing internationally sanctioned action as sinister elitism that threatens their voters’ prosperity.
“The Sweden Democrats are not climate deniers, whatever that means,” Swedish far-right leader Jimmie Åkesson told a crowd days before a September election that saw his party win big. But Sweden’s current climate plans, Åkesson said, were “100 percent symbolic” rather than meaningful. “All that leads to is that we get poorer, that our lives get worse.”
This is the gibbet on which the far right are hanging environmentalism: depicting them as the witting or unwitting cavalry of global elites.
“We consider it to be a globalist movement that intends to end all borders, intends to end our freedom, intends to end our freedom for our identities,” Javier Cortés, president of the Seville chapter of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said in an interview with POLITICO. “We are not in favor of CO2 emissions. On the contrary, we want to respect the environment. All we are saying is that the European Union has to clarify that it wants to sell us a climate religion in which we cannot emit CO2, while we make our industries disappear from Europe and we need to buy from China.”
To describe this as climate denial — a common but often inaccurate charge — would be to miss the point that this is now just another front in the culture wars.
Online disinformation about the last U.N. climate talks was largely focused on the hypocrisy and elitism of those attending, according to research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). The main spreaders weren’t websites and figures traditionally associated with climate denial, but culture war celebrities such as psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rebel Media’s Ezra Levant and Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.
Populist attacks on globalism “rely on a well-funded transnational network,” said Tubiana. “It warrants serious scrutiny.”
But while economic interests may be powering parts of the movement, there is also a sense of political opportunism at work. Huge changes to the economy will be needed to lower emissions at the speed dictated by U.N.-brokered global climate goals. There will be winners and losers — and the losers may gravitate toward populists pledging to take up their cause.
“Far-right organizations are recognizing this as a potentially lucrative topic that they can win votes or support on,” said Balsa Lubarda, head of the ideology research unit at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.
Loving the losers
The far right’s focus on the losers has been “turbo charged” by the energy crisis, said Jennie King, head of civic action and education at ISD, which populists have wrongly argued is the fault of green policy. The European Parliament’s coalition of far-right parties has grown and capitalized on the energy crisis by joining with center-right parties to vote down environmental legislation.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson — newly elected with Åkesson’s support — aims to dilute the country’s ambitions for cutting some greenhouse gas emissions, a move center-right Liberal Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari justified in familiar terms: “That is a reaction to the reality people are facing.” And in Britain, Brexit leader Nigel Farage retooled his campaign to become an anti-net zero mouthpiece.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right | Vincenzo Pinto/AFP via Getty Images
Strains of right-wing ecology may also mean that not all groups are actively hostile to the climate agenda, said Lubarda. Italy’s new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a huge fan of the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, which center on the Shire, an idealized bucolic homeland. Meloni says she wants to reclaim environmentalism for the right, but the protection of national economic interests still comes first.
“There is no more convinced ecologist than a conservative, but what distinguishes us from a certain ideological environmentalism is that we want to defend nature with man inside,” she said in her inaugural speech to parliament last month.
While Meloni has announced that she will attend COP27, she has also renamed the Ministry for the Ecological Transition the Ministry for Environment and Energy Security. The governing program of her Brothers of Italy party includes a section on climate change, but it strongly emphasizes the need to protect industry.
It’s this broad sense of demotion and delay that alarms those who are watching these ideas grow in stature among populists on the right. They say that while it may not sound like climate denial, the result is effectively the same.
“You can say that you are climate friends,” said Belgian Socialist MEP Marie Arena. “But in the act, you are not at all. You are business friends first.”
Jacopo Barragazzi, Charlie Duxbury and Zack Colman contributed to this report.
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ABOARD THE GEO BARENTS (AP) — Humanitarian groups caring for nearly 1,000 rescued migrants on three ships in the central Mediterranean are sounding an alarm about deteriorating conditions, but Italy’s new far-right-led government has not responded to requests for a safe portas it hardens its position against rescue boats.
The country’s new interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, has set the groundwork to ban humanitarian ships from Italian ports while appealing to countries whose flags the rescue ships fly to relieve the burden on Italy by accepting the rescued passengers.
The moves are reminiscent of the anti-NGO posture taken by League party leader Matteo Salvini, now the deputy premier, who prevented humanitarian ships from accessing Italy’s ports when he was interior minister from 2018-19.
So far, Italy, along with Malta, have remained silent in response to requests for a safe port from the three ships: the Doctors without Borders-operated Geo Barents, which has 572 people on board; SOS Mediteranee’s Ocean Viking, with 234 people on board, and the SOS Humanity’s Humanity 1 with 179. All were rescued over a weeklong period beginning Oct. 22.
While Italy is de facto blocking the humanitarian ships from disembarking the 1,000 people, Interior Ministry figures indicate that Italian authorities brought 6,383 others to the country’s shores over the last week.
Migrant arrivals by sea to Italy have risen this year, to 85,991 so far compared with 53,825 in the same period last year. The number is still well below the peak arrivals during 2014-2016.
The crew of the Geo Barents is struggling to accommodate the migrants picked up in seven operations starting Oct. 22. They include more than 60 unaccompanied minors, yet more families with children and pregnant woman, as well as the elderly. Many are sleeping on the floors, and supplies were running low.
“We are here on board with 572 people, some of them have been with us already for 6 days,” said Caroline Willemen, MSF Coordinator on the Geo Barents. “As you can see, the situation here on the deck is extremely overcrowded. People do not have space to move. The MSF team we are doing everything we can to take care of them.
“It is absolutely necessary that they can disembark as soon as possible in a place of safety,” she said.
The rescued migrants were struggling with the crowded conditions and the uncertainty.
“We don’t have enough space to sleep. We are sleeping down on the floor and it’s very cold at morning and at night,” said Khaled Mahmoud Mansour, a Palestinian. “Actually the situation is becoming day after day more difficult.”
After failing to get a response from either Italy or Malta, SOS Mediteranee also issued requests for safe ports to Greece, Spain and France. “The 234 rescued people on board must be disembarked urgently,” the group said. “The current blockade at sea of 985 persons is illegal and inhuman.”
The maritime rescue group urged EU member nations to come up with a “predictable system of disembarkation to ease the pressure on European coastal states,″ saying people rescued at sea “must no longer be traded into political debates.”
European Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said the commission is aware of the 3 ships with around 1,000 people seeking safe disembarkation, but emphasized that it does not coordinate operations at sea or landings.
“Saving lives at sea is a moral duty as well as a legal obligation for member states under international law, independently from circumstances which have led people to the distress at sea,” Hipper told reporters.
Piantedosi signed a directive last week that can be used to once again prevent humanitarian groups to access Italy’s port, and has asked the countries whose flag they are flying to take on the migrants.
“We cannot take on migrants picked up at sea by foreign ships that are systematically operating without any coordination by authorities,” Piantedosi told the Corriere della Sera newspaper this week.
“Since we are taking on 84% of the migrants arriving on our coast, saved by us, we hope that the much ballyhooed European solidarity will be realized,” he said.
Italy and Germany have traded communications regarding the German-flagged Humanity 1 ship but no agreement was reached. The German Foreign Ministry said it asked Italy to help quickly, but did not provide further details.
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Barry reported from Milan. Lorne Cook in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed reporting.
ROME (AP) — Environmental activists tossed pea soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting Friday in Rome to protest carbon use and natural gas extraction, but caused no damage to the glass-covered painting.
Security intervened immediately and removed the protesters kneeling in front of “The Sower” at the Palazzo Bonaparte to deliver a manifesto. Protesters from the same group, the Last Generation, earlier blocked a highway near Rome.
The painting belongs to the Kroller-Muller Museum in the Netherlands and was on loan for a show in Italy’s capital featuring works by Van Gogh. Officials said the 1888 painting was undamaged.
Italy’s new culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, condemned the protest.
“Attacking art is an ignoble act that must be firmly condemned,” he said. “Culture, which is the basis of our identity, must be defended and protected, and certainly not used as a megaphone for other forms of protest.”
Climate activists have staged similar protests have taken place at museums in Britain, Germany and elsewhere in Italy, targeting works by Van Gogh, Botticelli and Picasso.
The stunt backfired for some onlookers.
“It totally defeats the purpose.″ Hans Bergetoft, a tourist from Stockholm, said. “I am really for the cause in itself, but not the action. Not the action that they took. Not at all.”
BRUSSELS (AP) — New far-right Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni used her first visit to European Union headquarters in Brussels Thursday to declare that Italy will be a force to reckon with in EU affairs, leaving it unclear whether that was a promise or a threat from one of the bloc’s powerful founding members.
Her first foreign trip after brokering Italy’s only far-right-led government since World War II was not the ordinary kind of visit by a new leader of a major EU nation seeking to renew unshakable bonds with the 27-nation bloc.
For some, it brought the far right into the walls of the EU just as the bloc faces crises on many fronts.
Meloni emerged energized from the meetings with the EU’s most powerful officials: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the European Council president who chairs all EU summits.
Meloni said she had found her counterparts receptive and described the talks as “frank and very positive.”
“I am happy with the climate I found here in Brussels. Probably to be able to see and speak with people can help dismantle a narrative about yours truly,” Meloni told reporters. “We are not Martians. We are people in flesh and bone who explain our positions.”
She said they discussed the war in Ukraine, the resulting soaring prices for energy and raw materials as well as the heavy migration that Italy shoulders at the EU’s southern border.
It’s enough to send shivers down the spine of many EU legislators and officials, who fear the rule of law and revered principles of Western liberal democracy could be hollowed out from within as yet another EU nation turns sharply to the right.
Metsola sidestepped the political differences and centered on the common challenges ahead.
“I am aware that member states have different realities, but we must find the courage and political will to act as we did during the pandemic, by joining forces,” said Metsola after the meeting.
Many, though, are wary of working too closely with Meloni and her far-right-led ruling coalition.
On the eve of her visit, her government had to defend a decree banning rave parties against criticism it could be used to clamp down on protests, while it took no action against a neo-fascist march to the crypt of Italy’s late dictator Benito Mussolini.
Meloni has been dogged by critics who say she hasn’t unambiguously condemned fascism. The Brothers of Italy, which she co-founded in 2012, has its roots in a far-right party founded by nostalgists for Mussolini. She has retorted that she has “never felt sympathy or closeness for any non-democratic regime, including fascism.”
When it comes to the EU, Meloni is expected to criticize the bloc as being overly meddling in national affairs on anything from LGBTQ rights to local economies and too lax on migration.
Similar criticism has been heard in Poland and Hungary. For years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a proponent of “illiberalism,” has increasingly run an obstructionist course in an EU where many major decisions have to be made unanimously.
Meloni has stressed, though, that she doesn’t want to torpedo the bloc, whose founding treaty was signed in Rome in 1957.
Italy isn’t in a strong position to break ranks with the EU or the shared euro currency. Its overall debt exceeds 150% of gross domestic product and it’s in line to get around 200 billion euros in aid to deal with the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. This offers the EU institutions extensive political leverage.
On EU foreign policy, which has become a much more trans-Atlantic endeavor with the United States since Russia invaded Ukraine, Meloni has had to overcome suspicions that her coalition could be leaning too far towards Putin.
When Berlusconi boasted to his Forza Italia lawmakers last month of having reestablished contact with Putin and exchanged birthday gifts, Meloni immediately put her foot down.
“Italy will never be the weak link of the West with us in government,” Meloni said.
Meloni has firmly backed Ukraine in its struggle against Russia’s invasion.
LIVERPOOL, England — On the long picket line outside the gates of Liverpool’s Peel Port, rain-soaked dock workers warm themselves with cups of tea as they listen to 1980s pop.
Dozens of buses, cars and trucks honk in solidarity as they pass.
Dockers’ strikes are not new to Liverpool, nor is depravation. But this latest walk-out at Britain’s fourth-largest port is part of something much bigger, a great wave of public and private sector strikes taking place across the U.K. Railways, postal services, law courts and garbage collections are among the many public services grinding to a halt.
The immediate cause of the discontent, as elsewhere, is the rising cost of living. Inflation in the United Kingdom breached the 10 percent mark this year, with wages failing to keep pace.
But the U.K.’s economic woes long predate the current crisis. For more than a decade, Britain has been beset by weak economic growth, anaemic productivity, and stagnant private and public sector investment. Since 2016, its political leadership has been in a state of Brexit-induced flux.
Half a century after U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger looked at the U.K.’s 1970s economic malaise and declared that “Britain is a tragedy,” the United Kingdom is heading to be the sick man of Europe once again.
The immediate cause of Liverpool dockers’ discontent that brought them to strike is the rising cost of living. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Here in Liverpool, the “scars run very deep,” said Paul Turking, a dock worker in his late 30s. British voters, he added, have “been misled” by politicians’ promises to “level up” the country by investing heavily in regional economies. Conservatives “will promise you the world and then pull the carpet out from under your feet,” he complained.
“There’s no middle class no more,” said John Delij, a Peel Port veteran of 15 years. He sees the cost-of-living crisis and economic stagnation whittling away the middle rung of the economic ladder.
“How many billionaires do we have?” Delij asked, wondering how Britain could be the sixth-largest economy in the world with a record number of billionaires when food bank use is 35 percent above its pre-pandemic level. “The workers put money back into the economy,” he said.
What would they do if they were in charge? “Invest in affordable housing,” said Turking. “Housing and jobs.”
Falling behind
The British economy has been struck by particular turbulence over recent weeks. The cost of government borrowing soared in the wake of former PM Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget on September 23, with the U.K.’s central bank forced to step in and steady the bond markets.
But while the swift installation of Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, as prime minister seems to have restored a modicum of calm, the economic backdrop remains bleak. Spending and welfare cuts are coming. Taxes are certain to rise. And the underlying problems cut deep.
U.K. productivity growth since the financial crisis has trailed that of comparator nations such as the U.S., France and Germany. As such, people’s median incomes also lag behind neighboring countries over the same period. Only Russia is forecast to have worse economic growth among the G20 nations in 2023.
In 1976, the U.K. — facing stagflation, a global energy crisis, a current account deficit and labor unrest — had to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. It feels far-fetched, but today some are warning it could happen again.
The U.K. is spluttering its way through an illness brought about in part through a series of self-inflicted wounds that have undermined the basic pillars of any economy: confidence and stability.
The political and economic malaise is such that it has prompted unwanted comparisons with countries whose misfortunes Britain once watched amusedly from afar.
“The existential risk to the U.K. … is not that we’re suddenly going to go off an economic cliff, or that the country’s going to descend into civil war or whatever,” said Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London. “It’s that we will become like Italy.”
Portes, of course, does not mean a country blessed with good weather and fine food — but an economy hobbled by persistently low growth, caught in a dysfunctional political loop that lurches between “corrupt and incompetent right-wing populists” and “well-intentioned technocrats who can’t actually seem to turn the ship around.”
“That’s not the future that we want in the U.K,” he said.
Reviving the U.K.’s flatlining economy will not happen overnight. As Italy’s experience demonstrates, it’s one thing to diagnose an illness — another to cure it.
Experts speak of an unbalanced model heavily reliant upon Britain’s services sector and beset with low productivity, a result of years of underinvestment and a flexible labor market which delivers low unemployment but often insecure and low-paid work.
“We’re not investing in skills; businesses aren’t investing,” said Xiaowei Xu, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “It’s not that surprising that we’re not getting productivity growth.”
But any attempt to address the country’s ailments will require its economic stewards to understand their underlying causes — and those stretch back at least to the first truly global crisis of the 21st century.
Crash and burn
The 2008 financial crisis hammered economies around the world, and the U.K. was no exception. Its economy shrunk by more than 6 percent between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009. Five years passed before it returned to its pre-recession size.
For Britain, the crisis in fact began in September 2007, a year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when wobbles in the U.S. subprime mortgage market sparked a run on the British bank Northern Rock.
The U.K. discovered it was particularly vulnerable to such a shock. Over the second half of the 20th century, its manufacturing base had largely eroded as its services sector expanded, with financial and professional services and real estate among the key drivers. As the Bank of England put it: “The interconnectedness of global finance meant that the U.K. financial system had become dangerously exposed to the fall-out from the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market.”
The crisis was a “big shock to the U.K.’s broad economic model,” said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. Productivity took an immediate hit as exports of financial services plunged. It never fully recovered.
“Productivity before the crash was basically, ‘Can we create lots and lots of debt and generate lots and lots of income on the back of this? Can we invent collateralized debt obligations and trade them in vast volumes?’” said James Meadway, director of the Progressive Economy Forum and a former adviser to Labour’s left-wing former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
A post-crash clampdown on City practises had an obvious impact.
“This is a major part of the British economy, so if it’s suddenly not performing the way it used to — for good reasons — things overall are going to look a bit shaky,” Meadway added.
The shock did not contain itself to the economy. In a pattern that would be repeated, and accentuated, in the coming years, it sent shuddering waves through the country’s political system, too.
The 2010 election was fought on how to best repair Britain’s broken economy. In 2009, the U.K. had the second-highest budget deficit in the G7, trailing only the U.S., according to the U.K. government’s own fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
The Conservative manifesto declared “our economy is overwhelmed by debt,” and promised to close the U.K.’s mounting budget deficit in five years with sharp public sector cuts. The incumbent Labour government responded by pledging to halve the deficit by 2014 with “deeper and tougher” cuts in public spending than the significant reductions overseen by former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
The election returned a hung parliament, with the Conservatives entering into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The age of austerity was ushered in.
Austerity nation
Defenders of then-Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity program insist it saved Britain from the sort of market-led calamity witnessed this fall, and put the U.K. economy in a condition to weather subsequent global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout from the war in Ukraine.
“That hard work made policies like furlough and the energy price cap possible,” said Rupert Harrison, one of Osborne’s closest Treasury advisers.
Pointing to the brutal market response to Truss’ freewheeling economic plans, Harrison praised the “wisdom” of the coalition in prioritizing tackling the U.K.’s debt-GDP ratio. “You never know when you will be vulnerable to a loss of credibility,” he noted.
But Osborne’s detractors argue austerity — which saw deep cuts to community services such as libraries and adult social care; courts and prisons services; road maintenance; the police and so much more — also stripped away much of the U.K.’s social fabric, causing lasting and profound economic damage. A recent study claimed austerity was responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.
Under Osborne’s plan, three-quarters of the fiscal consolidation was to be delivered by spending cuts. With the exception of the National Health Service, schools and aid spending, all government budgets were slashed; public sector pay was frozen; taxes (mainly VAT) rose.
But while the government came close to delivering its fiscal tightening target for 2014-15, “the persistent underperformance of productivity and real GDP over that period meant the deficit remained higher than initially expected,” the OBR said. By his own measure, Osborne had failed, and was forced to push back his deficit-elimination target further. Austerity would have to continue into the second half of the 2010s.
Many economists contend that the fiscal belt-tightening sucked demand out of the economy and worsened Britain’s productivity crisis by stifling investment. “That certainly did hit U.K. growth and did some permanent damage,” said King’s College London’s Portes.
“If that investment isn’t there, other people start to find it less attractive to open businesses,” former Labour aide Meadway added. “If your railways aren’t actually very good … it does add up to a problem for businesses.”
A 2015 study found U.K. productivity, as measured by GDP per hour worked, was now lower than in the rest of the G7 by a whopping 18 percentage points.
“Frankly, nobody knows the whole answer,” Osborne said of Britain’s productivity conundrum in May 2015. “But what I do know is that I’d much rather have the productivity challenge than the challenge of mass unemployment.”
‘Jobs miracle’
Rising employment was indeed a signature achievement of the coalition years. Unemployment dropped below 6 percent across the U.K. by the end of the parliament in 2015, with just Germany and Austria achieving a lower rate of joblessness among the then-28 EU states. Real-term wages, however, took nearly a decade to recover to pre-crisis levels.
Economists like Meadway contend that the rise in employment came with a price, courtesy of Britain’s famously flexible labor market. He points to a Sports Direct warehouse in the East Midlands, where a 2015 Guardian investigation revealed the predominantly immigrant workforce was paid illegally low wages, while the working conditions were such that the facility was nicknamed “the gulag.”
The warehouse, it emerged, was built on a former coal mine, and for Meadway the symbolism neatly charts the U.K.’s move away from traditional heavy industry toward more precarious service sector employment. “It’s not a secure job anymore,” he said. “Once you have a very flexible labor market, the pressure on employers to pay more and the capacity for workers to bargain for more is very much reduced.”
Throughout the period, the Bank of England — the U.K.’s central bank — kept interest rates low and pursued a policy of quantitative easing. “That tends to distort what happens in the economy,” argued Meadway. QE, he said, is a “good [way of] getting money into the hands of people who already have quite a lot” and “doesn’t do much for people who depend on wage income.”
Meanwhile — whether necessary or not — the U.K.’s austerity policies undoubtedly worsened a decades-long trend of underinvestment in skills and research and development (Britain lags only Italy in the G7 on R&D spending). At British schools, there was a 9 percent real terms fall in per-pupil spending between 2009 and 2019, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Xu. “As countries get richer, usually you start spending more on education,” Xu noted.
Two senior ministers in the coalition government — David Gauke, who served in the Treasury throughout Osborne’s tenure, and ex-Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable — have both accepted that the government might have focused more on higher taxation and less on cuts to public spending. But both also insisted the U.K had ultimately been correct to prioritize putting its public finances on a sounder footing.
It was February 2018 before Britain finally achieved Osborne’s goal of eliminating the deficit on its day-to-day budget.
Austerity was coming to an end, at last. But Osborne had already left the Treasury, 18 months earlier — swept away along with Cameron in the wake of a seismic national uprising.
***
David Cameron had won the 2015 election outright, despite — or perhaps because of — the stringent spending cuts his coalition government had overseen, more of which had been pledged in his 2015 manifesto. Also promised, of course, was a public vote on Britain’s EU membership.
The reasons for the leave vote that followed were many and complex — but few doubt that years of underinvestment in poorer parts of the U.K. were among them.
Regardless, the 2016 EU referendum triggered a period of political acrimony and turbulence not seen in Westminster for generations. With no pre-agreed model of what Brexit should actually entail, the U.K.’s future relationship with the EU became the subject of heated and protracted debate. After years of wrangling, Britain finally left the bloc at the end of January 2020, severing ties in a more profound way than many had envisaged.
While the twin crises of COVID and Ukraine have muddled the picture, most economists agree Brexit has already had a significant impact on the U.K. economy. The size of Britain’s trade flows relative to GDP has fallen further than other G7 countries, business investment growth trails the likes of Japan, South Korea and Italy, and the OBR has stuck by its March 2020 prediction that Brexit would reduce productivity and U.K. GDP by 4 percent.
Perhaps more significantly, Brexit has ushered in a period of political instability. As prime ministers come and go (the U.K. is now on its fifth since 2016), economic programs get neglected, or overturned. Overseas investors look on with trepidation.
“The evidence that the referendum outcome, and the kind of uncertainty and change in policy that it created, have led to low investment and low growth in the U.K. is fairly compelling,” said professor Stephen Millard, deputy director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
Beyond the instability, the broader impact of the vote to leave remains contentious.
Portes argued — as many Remain supporters also do — that much harm was done by the decision to leave the EU’s single market. “It’s the facts, not the uncertainty that in my view is responsible for most of the damage,” he said.
Brexit supporters dismiss such claims.
“It’s difficult statistically to find much significant effect of Brexit on anything,” said professor Patrick Minford, founder member of Economists for Brexit. “There’s so much else going on, so much volatility.”
Minford, an economist favored by ex-PM Truss, acknowledged that “Brexit is disruptive in the short run, so it’s perfectly possible that you would get some short-run disruption.” But he added: “It was a long-term policy decision.”
Where next?
Plenty of economists can rattle off possible solutions, although actually delivering them has thus far evaded Britain’s political class. “It’s increasing investment, having more of a focus on the long-term, it’s having economic strategies that you set out and actually commit to over time,” says the IFS’ Xu. “As far as possible, it’s creating more certainty over economic policy.”
But in seeking to bring stability after the brief but chaotic Truss era, new U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has signaled a fresh period of austerity is on the way to plug the latest hole in the nation’s finances. Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove told Times Radio that while, ideally, you wouldn’t want to reduce long-term capital investments, he was sure some spending on big projects “will be cut.”
This could be bad news for many of the U.K.’s long-awaited infrastructure schemes such as the HS2 high-speed rail line, which has been in the works for almost 15 years and already faces a familiar mix of local resistance, vested interests, and a sclerotic planning system.
“We have a real problem in the sense that the only way to really durably raise productivity growth for this country is for investments to pick up,” said Springford, from the Centre for European Reform. “And the headwinds to that are quite significant.”
For dock workers at Liverpool’s Peel Port, the prospect of a fresh round of austerity amid a cost-of-living crisis is too much to bear. “Workers all over this country need to stand up for themselves and join a union,” insisted Delij.
For him, it’s all about priorities — and the arguments still echo back to the great crash of 15 years ago. “They bailed the bankers out in 2007,” he said, “and can’t bail hungry people out now.”
MILAN — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday defended her government against criticism that a decree banning rave parties could be used to clamp down on sit-ins and other forms of protest while a march by thousands of fascist sympathizers to the crypt of the country’s slain fascist dictator went unchallenged.
The decree on illegal raves was among the first actions of Meloni’s far-right-led government. Both the political opposition and judicial magistrates voiced alarm that the tough law-and-order stance signaled the government’s possible intolerance of disobedience.
Critics noted that no action was taken against the weekend march by several thousand admirers of the late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini wearing fascist symbols and singing colonial-era hymns in Predappio, Mussolini’s birth and burial place, while the government in Rome took extraordinary action to break up a rave party in the northern city of Modena.
“We will never deny anyone the right to express dissent,”Meloni said in a Facebook post, accusing those suggesting that might be the case of ”instrumentalization.”
She said the decree was necessary “after years in which the government has bowed its head in the face of illegality.” When property is occupied without authorization and drug use and sales are prevalent, “it is right to prosecute illegal raves,” Meloni said.
She did not address the criticism over the handling of the rave versus the march by fascist sympathizers.
Earlier, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he deplored “in the most absolute way” the march held Sunday in Predappio marking the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome that ushered in two decades of fascist rule. Still, he dismissed the event as a “clownish” stunt.
He said similar gatherings had happened throughout the years “without trouble and under control of police,” and that any acts that violated Italian laws criminalizing apology of fascism would be turned over to magistrates.
“We live in a democratic country with solid institutions and a constitution in which all political parties are recognized. We have the antibodies to defeat whoever wants to go in another direction,’’ Piantedosi said.
Meloni’s government is the first led by a party with neo-fascist roots since Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship was ousted during World War II, ending a disastrous alliance with Hitler’s Germany.
Meloni has tried to chart a moderate course, seeking to distance her Brothers of Italy party from its neo-fascist origins and denouncing Mussolini’s racial laws that sent thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps. But many remain concerned about the more militant pasts of the premier and some of the ministers serving in her government.
Speaking to Corriere della Sera, Piantedosi denied that the decree targeting illegal raves would be used in other contexts, calling such suggestions “offensive.”
The decree, which still must be debated and approved by parliament to become law, would make the organizers of unauthorized gatherings of more than 50 people in public or private settings eligible for prosecution and prison terms of up to six years.
According to legal experts, the decree cites the presence of 50 people for creating a “gathering,” a term which could be applied to political, union or even sporting events. An expert in criminal law at the University of Bologna, Vittorio Manes, told Italian newspaper Quotidiano Nazionale the measure was “extremely generic and therefore slippery,″
Italy’s Constitution allows limits on the right to assembly “only for proven reasons of public safety and security,” and does not discuss threats to order or public health — the rationales cited in the decree, Giovanni Maria Flick, a former president of Italy’s constitutional court, told daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Flick said the government’s drawing up a new law looked especially heavy-handed when existing statutes could be applied to break up rave parties.
Concerns were accentuated by a police action last week to break up a student protest against a meeting at a Rome university that included a lawmaker from Meloni’s party. Video showed riot police blocking students who had protested behind a banner reading: “Fascists out.”
Asked whether force was necessary in that case, Piantedosi told Corriere that he could not second-guess “the professionality and the sensitivity of those in the field who have to make decisions in a few seconds.”
The decree was approved Monday as some 2,000 young people from throughout Europe gathered in the northern Italian city of Modena for a rave in an abandoned warehouse. Authorities said the warehouse was dangerous and risked collapsing from loud music vibrations. They also cited the impact on traffic.
Event participants abandoned the site when instructed.
CAPE SOUNION, Greece — When Stelios Zompanakis quit his job at Greece’s central bank to try his luck at boat racing, friends and family pleaded with him to reconsider.
Nine years later, he spends summers on the “Ikigai,” a 53-foot yacht he named after the Japanese concept of finding happiness through a life of meaning.
Weeklong holiday trips on his yacht around some of the lesser-known Greek islands — Milos, Sifnos, Serifos, Kythnos and many others — were booked up through October.
“The demand is insane,” said Zompanakis, who recently paced barefoot around the teak-paneled deck to adjust the sail and check instrument panels as the boat swung past the ancient Temple of Poseidon, on a clifftop south of Athens.
Tourism around the Mediterranean has been booming. Helped by a strong U.S. dollar and Europeans’ pent-up demand to find a beach after years of COVID-19 travel restrictions, it’s been a stronger comeback from the pandemic slump than many expected, which led to long lines, canceled flights and lost luggage this summer at many European airports — though not in Greece.
“People after COVID, after two years of frustration, probably put some money aside and decided they needed a vacation,” Zompanakis said. “And I think the income from their budgets that they are willing to spend rose so that also brought more quality … and this helped Greece a lot.”
Greece is on course to beat its annual record revenue haul from tourism. Portugal also is eyeing a full recovery, while late-summer data suggested Spain, Italy and Cyprus will end the year just shy of pre-pandemic visitor levels.
A blessing for Europe’s southern economies, the rebound is also easing the continent’s tilt toward recession brought on by rocketing energy prices, the war in Ukraine and enduring disruptions caused by the pandemic.
“For countries like Greece and others like Italy and Spain, they have actually produced plenty of resilience during the summer … despite the tsunami that is coming from the cost-of-living crisis and the energy crisis,” said Lorenzo Codogno, chief economist at LC Macro Advisors and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.
Europe’s Mediterranean coast also offers destinations that are safe and have cultural interest, Codogno said, but the good news may not last.
Economic growth in 19 countries using the euro currency is set to sink to 0.5% in 2023 from an increase of 3.1% this year, according to a new forecast from the International Monetary Fund.
Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain have the highest debt levels in the eurozone relative to the size of their economies and also face rising borrowing costs.
Stephen Rooney, a senior economist focused on tourism at Oxford Economics, says tourism-dependent countries will eventually see their industries hit harder next year by the cost-of-living crisis driven by soaring inflation and high energy bills.
“There is an expectation that these challenges will begin to bite as we move into the final quarter of this year and into 2023,” he said. “We do not expect the travel recovery to stall in 2023, but we do expect it will slow somewhat in 2023 in line with the general economic slowdown, before picking up again in 2024.”
In Athens’ historic Plaka district, tourists were still packing the narrow streets during a mild late October, crowding around ice cream sellers and stopping to browse at stores selling leather bags, jewelry, hats and souvenirs.
At Loom Carpets, co-owner Vahan Apikian, folded and stacked carpets and laid out shoulder bags for customers, happy that demand has remained high well into the autumn.
“Business has gone very well: We had many more visitors than in 2019, which was a record year. This year was even better,” he said.
As the days get shorter and the outlook darkens over European Union economies, Greece and other southern member states have renewed national efforts to set up year-round holiday destinations, hoping that hiking trails, rock climbing and visits to historic churches can dampen the winter drop in arrivals.
But year-round tourism also exposes the shortcomings in governments’ ability to plan and coordinate, said Panagiotis Karkatsoulis, a senior policy analyst at the Athens-based Institute for Regulatory Research who has advised governments in southern Europe and the Middle East on policy reforms.
“There isn’t much point in advertising a trail to a historic monastery that closes at 3 p.m. or trying to bring seniors to a destination with bad roads and no hospital access … tourism exposes every weakness an administration has,” he said.
The revenue windfall this winter, he argued, will have to fund continued government aid for struggling businesses and households rather than go to longer-term improvements.
“Anything like tourism that generates wealth is unquestionably positive,” he said. “But how that money is spent — that’s a different conversation.”
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AP reporters Theodora Tongas and Lefteris Pitarakis in Athens, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal; Raquel Redondo in Madrid; Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus; and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.
MILAN — Pablo Marí, the Spanish soccer player who was wounded in a knife attack at an Italian shopping center, called himself “lucky” to survive and was being treated Friday following injuries to his back and mouth.
Five people were stabbed Thursday and one was killed after a man grabbed a knife from a supermarket shelf, authorities said.
Police arrested a 46-year-old Italian man suspected in the attack at a shopping center in Assago, a suburb of Milan, carabinieri said.
The 29-year-old Marí, who plays for Serie A club Monza on loan from Arsenal, does not have life-threating injuries but was still receiving medical attention at the Niguarda hospital in Milan.
“He told me he had ‘suerte’ (luck), because, ‘today I saw someone else die,’” Monza CEO Adriano Galliani said after visiting Marí at the hospital late Thursday.
“He had his child in a cart and his wife next to him. … He was probably saved by his height,” Galliani said of the 1.93-meter (6-foot-4) Marí. “He was hit in the back and then he saw this delinquent stab someone in the throat.”
Massimo Tarantino, a former soccer player for Napoli and Inter Milan, was involved in stopping the assailant.
“He was just screaming,” Tarantino told reporters. “I didn’t do anything. I’m not a hero.”
Galliani said Marí also had injuries to his mouth, possibly from gritting his teeth during the attack.
“He had two stitches applied to his lip and injuries to his back, which fortunately did not affect any organs,” Galliani said, adding that Marí was “lucid.”
Marí’s wife was questioned by police as a witness to the attack, Galliani said.
Marí, a center back, has played in eight of Monza’s 11 Italian league games this season and scored the second goal in a 2-0 win over Spezia this month. He spent the second half of last season on loan with Udinese, another Italian club.
Monza, which is owned by former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, hosts Bologna on Monday in its next match. The team is playing its debut season in the top division.
“Pablo is a great kid,” Galliani said. “He had the strength to joke around, telling me that Monday he’ll be on the field. I brought him well wishes from president Berlusconi and all of his teammates.”
A supermarket employee died en route to the hospital, according to the news agency ANSA, which said three other victims were in serious condition. Another person was treated for shock but not hospitalized, police said.
Monza coach Raffaele Palladino also visited with Marí, and Monza issued a statement on Twitter on Friday mourning the victim in the attack.
“All of AC Monza shares deeply in the family’s pain for the loss of Luis Fernando Ruggieri, victim of the madness that took place last night in Assago,” the club said. “Thoughts also go in these hours to the other people injured and their families.”
The motive for the attacks was unknown, but police said the man showed signs of being psychologically unstable. There were no elements to suggest terrorism.
The attack occurred near the Assago Forum, an arena that is slated to host figure skating and short-track speedskating for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.
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MILAN — Special forces stormed a carabinieri barracks near Italy’s Lake Como early Friday where an officer had barricaded himself overnight with hostages after allegedly shooting and killing the commander, Italian media reported.
The suspect was taken into custody unharmed, the news agency LaPresse reported. One of the special forces was shot in the knee during the blitz, while the hostages remaining in the barracks in the Lombardy town of Asso were released unharmed.
The hostages included another carabinieri officer, who shut herself in a room, and family members of other officers who live in the barracks and remained in their quarters away from the assailant.
According to the news agency ANSA, the officer shot the station commander, Doriano Furceri, at close range, and shouted, “I killed him.”
One person has died and four people, including Spanish soccer player Pablo Mari, were “seriously injured” after a stabbing attack on the outskirts of the Italian city of Milan on Thursday, according to Italian national police.
The suspected attacker has been arrested, police said.
“A mentally unstable man decided to stab people. One person has died and four are now seriously injured,” a police spokesman said.
Mari, who is an Arsenal center-back currently on loan at AC Monza, was not seriously hurt in the attack, Arsenal said in a statement Thursday.
“We are all shocked to hear the dreadful news about the stabbing in Italy, which has put a number of people in hospital including our on-loan center-back Pablo Mari,” Arsenal said.
“We have been in contact with Pablo’s agent who has told us he’s in hospital and is not seriously hurt.
“Our thoughts are with Pablo and the other victims of this dreadful incident,” the statement read
ROME — Giorgia Meloni, whose political party with neo-fascist roots emerged victorious in recent elections, was sworn in on Saturday as Italy’s first far-right premier since the end of World War II. She is also the first woman to be premier.
Meloni, 45, recited the oath of office before President Sergio Mattarella, who formally asked her to form a government a day earlier.
Her Brothers of Italy party, which she co-founded in 2012, will rule in coalition with the right-wing League of Matteo Salvini and the conservative Forza Italia party headed by former Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Those two parties’ popularity has sagged with voters in recent years.
Meloni recited the ritual oath of office, pledging to be faithful to Italy’s post-war republic and to act “in the exclusive interests of the nation.” The pledge was signed by her and counter-signed by Mattarella, who, in his role as head of state, serves as guarantor of the Constitution, drafted in the years immediately after the end of war, which saw the demise of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Meloni’s 24 ministers followed, similarly swearing in. Five of the ministers are technocrats, not representing any party. Six of them are women.
In her campaign for the Sept. 25 election, Meloni insisted that national interests prevail over European Union policies should there be conflict. She often railed against EU bureaucracy.
Salvini’s right-wing League party has at times leaned euroskeptic. An admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Salvini has also questioned the wisdom of EU sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, arguing that they hurt Italian business interests more than Russian ones.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sounded an upbeat note in her congratulations tweet to Meloni right after she was sworn in and noted that the Italian was the first woman to hold the premiership.
“I count on and look forward to constructive cooperation with the new government on the challenges we face together,” the EU chief said.
One immediate challenge for Meloni will be ensuring that her country stays solidly aligned with other major nations in the West in helping that country fight off the Russian invaders.
In the days before she became premier, Meloni resorted to giving an an ultimatum to her other main coalition partner, Berlusconi, over his professed sympathy for Putin.
Berlusconi in remarks to his center-right Forza Italia party lawmakers, delivered what was tantamount to justification for the Russian invasion in February to install what he called a “decent” government in the Ukrainian capital.
After making clear she’d rather not govern than lead a coalition with any partner wavering over continued Italian support for Ukraine, aligned with Europe and NATO — “Italy with us in government will never be the weak link of the West” — Meloni tapped as her foreign minister a longtime Berlusconi stalwart with solid pro-Europe credentials. Antonio Tajani formerly was president of the European Parliament.
With potential wavering in Parliament by her Russian-sympathizing allies, as well as from former Premier Giuseppe Conte, a populist opposition leader, over continued arms supplies to Ukraine, Meloni appointed one of her party co-founders, Guido Crosetto, as defense minister.
While Meloni has pitched herself as crucial to combating leftist ideology, Crosetto sounded a more conciliatory note.
“Whoever governs represents the entire nation, sheds partisan attire and takes on that of collective responsibility,” the new defense minister told reporters.
Europe’s political right, eager to dominate on the continent, exulted in Meloni’s coming to power.
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, referring to Meloni and Salvini, wrote on Twitter: “Throughout Europe, patriots are coming to power and with them, this Europe of nations.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also hailed the birth of her new government as a “big day for the European Right.”
Meloni will lay out her priorities when she pitches for support in Parliament ahead of confidence votes required of new governments. Voting is expected within a few days.
While her government holds a comfortable majority in the legislature, the vote could indicate any cracks in her coalition if any of her partners’ lawmakers, perhaps disgruntled by not getting ministries they wanted for their parties, don’t rally behind her.
Meloni’s government replaces that led by Mario Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief who was appointed by Mattarella in 2021 to lead a pandemic national unity coalition. Meloni was the only major party leader to refuse to join that coalition, insisting governments must be decided by the voters.
In any unusual touch for a country used to male-dominated politics and power, attending the swearing-in ceremony in a sumptuous room of the Quirinal Palace was Meloni’s companion, who is a journalist in Berlusconi’s media empire, and their 6-year-old daughter, Ginevra.
While Meloni didn’t campaign openly to be Italy’s first woman premier, she has said there would be no doubt that her victory would be clearly breaking through the “glass ceiling” that discourages women’s progress.
Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is due to be sworn in as Italy’s first female prime minister, won the election on a campaign built around a promise to block migrant ships and support for traditional “family values” and anti-LGBTQ themes.
She heads an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, her own Brothers of Italy chief among them, and is set to form the most right-wing government Italy has seen in decades.
Meloni’s win in parliamentary elections last month suggests the allure of nationalism remains undimmed in Italy – but her vow to take the country on a hard-right turn still leaves many uncertain what will happen next.
The new government is made up of a coalition with two other right-wing leaders. One is Matteo Salvini, a former interior minister who became the darling of the hard-right in 2018 when he shifted his party, the League, once a northern secessionist party, into a nationalist force.
The other is Silvio Berlusconi, the center-right former Italian prime minister widely remembered for his “bunga bunga” sex scandals with young women. Both men have previously publicly expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has prompted questions over what the coalition’s approach to Russia will be.
And just this week – days before consultations on forming the government were set to begin – secretly recorded audio was circulated in which Berlusconi appeared to lay the blame for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine at Kyiv’s door, and boasted of having reestablished relations with the Russian leader.
“I reconnected a little bit with President Putin, quite a bit, in the sense that for my birthday he gave me 20 bottles of Vodka and a very sweet letter, and I responded with giving him bottles of Lambrusco,” said Berlusconi in the clip, released by Italian news agency LaPresse on Tuesday. The 86-year-old billionaire and media magnate was speaking with Forza Italia party members at the time.
A party spokesperson denied Berlusconi was in touch with Putin, saying he had been telling parliamentarians “an old story referring to an episode many years ago.” Berlusconi defended his comments in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Thursday, saying they had been taken out of context.
Amid backlash over the comments, Meloni, who has been a strong supporter of Ukraine as it battles Moscow’s invasion, sought to clarify where she and and the coalition would stand once in power.
“I have and always will be clear, I intend to lead a government with a foreign policy that is clear and unequivocal. Italy is fully part of Europe and the Atlantic Alliance. Anyone who does not agree with this cornerstone will not be able to be part of the government, at the cost of not being a government. With us governing, Italy will never be the weak link of the West,” she said.
Nonetheless, liberals within Italy and the European Union are fearful of what the promised rightward turn may mean for the country and its future – while conservative constituents feel only a strong-arm politician, like Meloni, can lead the country out of crisis amid soaring energy costs and high youth unemployment.
“Meloni is not expressing the vote choices of radical right-wing voters, because we have data that shows that she has been voted for by mostly the center-right,” political science professor Lorenzo De Sio of the Luiss Guido Carli University told CNN.
“I would say that the motto for Meloni is to be a sort of new conservative – that is to say, conservativism for the 21st century. She might bear some far-back connection to the post-fascist legacy, but clearly that’s not the core of her political platform now.”
Meloni grew up in the working-class Roman neighborhood of Garbatella, a historically left-wing part of southern Rome that was built during Benito Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. She got her political start in the movement Youth Front, a political organization with fascist roots.
She went on to create her own political party, Brothers of Italy, which in just four years went from taking 4% of the vote to winning 26% in last month’s election. While that doesn’t represent the majority of Italians, thanks to her partnership with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Salvini’s League, the coalition has enough seats in parliament to govern the country.
Back in the Garbatella neighborhood, among the fruit and vegetable stands that Meloni would go to with her mother, some locals remember her as a child, long before she embraced politics. Opinions on what she will be like as a leader vary widely.
“I know her very well. I knew her since she was little,” said Aldo, a fruit and vegetable vendor from Garbatella who has run his market stand for decades. “Her mother would come shop here. She always had a book in her hand to study. If she goes forward like she did when she was little, she’ll be strong.”
He added: “You have to have a strong fist. Period. You understand? That’s how you move forward. Otherwise Italy, kapoof, it goes away!”
Just across the market, Gloria, who was born and raised in Garbatella and helps her son at his Roman food stand, has very different views.
“What she has said until now terrifies me,” she told CNN.
“There are many people that connect with these kinds of conservative ideals because they are racist, because they are not progressive. I have three children and I wonder, will my daughter have the freedom to have an abortion if she wants, to be a lesbian?”
Meloni has sought in recent times to distance her party from its neo-fascist roots. Her policy proposals have also evolved over time, including walking back some of her more anti-EU ideas.
Back in 2014, she said, “Italy has to leave the euro!” and called for Congress to revoke sanctions on Russia. Now, according to her proposed plan for government and latest comments, she wants Italy to be a “protagonist within Europe.”
Emiliano, a local who was shopping at the Garbatella market, said he didn’t bother to vote in the latest election. “Neither the left nor the right deserve a vote. Before, politicians ate but we ate also. Now only they eat,” he said.
With the skyrocketing cost of energy, the risk for Italian businesses and households is high. The agricultural sector, which represents 1.96% of Italy’s GDP, is facing a shortage of everything from fertilizers, to diesel, to electricity and glass, causing prices to rise rapidly with a devastating impact on farm budgets, according to Coldiretti, the largest association for agricultural assistance in Italy.
According to a recent report by Coldiretti, rising production costs have forced many small agricultural businesses to shut down for the season because they can’t cope.
Sabina Petrucci manages her family’s olive oil company, Olio Petrucci, and is also a member of Coldiretti’s European council for young agricultural workers. She feels hopeful and believes the only way to fix the present issues is through strong political leadership.
“We need a very concrete government who helps us with energy costs and also to achieve the financial aid and financial help we may need in the future,” said Petrucci. “Many of the producers in the area are stopping their production, they really are frightened about the increasing costs.”
She describes rising energy costs as “the major threat for us,” adding: “We have opened our mill, but the production costs have risen throughout the summer.”
Italy has the third oldest population in the world, but Meloni and her party have been working to connect with Italy’s youth, the next generation of voters. She herself became involved in politics at 15, after registering with Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a party established by Giorgio Almirante, who was a minister in the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s government.
Francesco Todde is a leader of the National Youth movement, a political movement put in place by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party in 2014 to connect with a younger generation of politically interested Italians who have been frustrated with the political status quo.
“Giorgia Meloni comes from a political youth path, so she always paid a lot of attention to the youth and made reforms for the youth. At the start of her political career she was minister of youth,” he told CNN.
Elisa Segnini Bocchia, another committed member of the National Youth movement, responds to why some are quick to associate this movement with fascism, saying: “Our past isn’t our future. So, we don’t look at the past. We look for the new future.”
Populist firebrand Giorgia Meloni has been named as Italy’s first female prime minister, becoming the country’s most far-right leader since Benito Mussolini.
She received the mandate to form a government from Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella on Friday afternoon after two days of official consultations, and is set to be sworn in at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) on Saturday.
Last month’s general election resulted in an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, led by her ultraconservative Brothers of Italy, winning enough seats in Italy’s parliament to form a government.
Meloni announced her government picks in Rome’s Quirinal Palace, making the leader of Italy’s far right League party, Matteo Salvini, infrastructure minister.
Giancarlo Giorgetti, also of the League party, was made economy minister. Antonio Tajani from the Forza Italia party was given the position of minister of foreign affairs while the role of defense minister went to Guido Crosetto, one of the founders of the Brothers of Italy party.
The new government will be made up of a coalition of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, Salvini’s League party and the Forza Italia party, led by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Brothers of Italy received nine ministries whereas Forza Italia and the League each received five ministries.
Meloni will be sworn into office during a ceremony at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) on Saturday morning.
Pulling together her new cabinet has exposed tensions. This week, the controversial former leader Berlusconi made headlines when audio released by Italian news agency LaPresse revealed the 86-year-old speaking about his “reestablished” relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Berlusconi’s office confirmed to CNN on Thursday that the clips were authentic – having apparently been secretly recorded during a meeting of his Forza Italia party in the parliamentary chamber on Tuesday.
In the audio, the billionaire and media magnate says he has “reestablished relations with President Putin” and goes on to boast that the Russian leader called him “the first of his five true friends.”
His comments raised eyebrows, as diplomatic relations between Russia and Western leaders remain strained amid the Kremlin’s grueling military assault on Ukraine.
Berlusconi has been the subject of multiple corruption and bribery trials during his tumultuous political career.
Meloni has been a strong supporter of Ukraine as it battles Moscow’s invasion. Amid backlash for her coalition over Berlusconi’s leaked comments, she restated her foreign policy line.
“With us governing, Italy will never be the weak link of the West. The nation of spaghetti and mandolini that is so dear to many of our detractors will relaunch its credibility and defend its interests,” Meloni said late Wednesday on her Instagram account.
Speaking earlier Friday after a meeting with Mattarella and her coalition partners, Meloni said it was necessary to form the new government “as soon as possible.”
“We are ready to govern Italy,” Meloni’s official Facebook page stated. “We will be able to face the urgencies and challenges of our time with awareness and competence.”
Meloni entered Italy’s crowded political scene in 2006 and in 2012 co-founded the Brothers of Italy, a party whose agenda is rooted in Euroskepticism and anti-immigration policies.
The group’s popularity soared ahead of September’s election, as Italian voters once again rejected mainstream politics and opted for a fringe figure.
She first made her name as vice-president of the National Alliance, an unapologetically neo-fascist group formed by supporters of Benito Mussolini. Meloni herself openly admired the dictator as a youth, but later distanced herself from his brand of fascism – despite keeping the tricolor flame symbolizing the eternal fire on his tomb in the logo for the Brothers of Italy.
She has pursued a staunchly Conservative agenda throughout her time in politics, frequently questioning LGBT rights, abortion rights and immigration policies.
ROME — Giorgia Meloni has been named Italy’s first female prime minister at the head of a right-wing government, after holding talks with the country’s president.
After a week of infighting which overshadowed the negotiations, Meloni’s warring coalition put forward a united front, backing Meloni to lead the country during formal talks with President Sergio Mattarella, on Friday.
Later on Friday Mattarella asked Meloni to form a government.
Meloni, after arriving for talks in a Fiat 500, accepted unconditionally, a spokesman for the president’s office said. The right-wing coalition emerged triumphant from the election, with 44 percent of the vote, led by Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which took 26 percent.
But even before a government could be cobbled together, rivalry emerged inside the coalition, with allies arguing over Meloni’s unwillingness to accommodate Silvio Berlusconi’s preferred nominations in her cabinet.
At the opening of the new parliament, Berlusconi, leader of the Forza Italia party, said in a note left in public view that he found Meloni “overbearing … domineering … arrogant … offensive.”
No sooner were peacetalks concluded than Berlusconi was recorded asserting that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was to blame for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and affirming his friendship with Vladimir Putin.
Meloni replied saying that anyone who did not agree with her pro-Europe, pro-NATO orientation “cannot be part of the government, even if that means not forming the government.”
Despite the clashes, the right-wingers made up in order to take over as Italy’s new government. Meloni met with the President on Friday alongside her fellow leaders in the right wing bloc, Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, and Berlusconi.
Meloni is set to name her team on Friday with the new cabinet sworn in on Saturday and a vote of confidence in parliament on Tuesday.
Her team must immediately roll up their sleeves, working to deadlines including the Budget, which has to be sent to Europe for approval by the end of the month, and the Recovery Plan, the EU’s post pandemic economic aid program. Some 55 targets and milestones have to be met by the year’s end to unlock almost 20 billion euros in funding for Italy under the program.
The new government’s priority will be to tackle a cost of living crisis exacerbated by sky-high energy prices and rising interest rates, which weigh on Italy’s heavy public debt.
Caretaker prime minister Mario Draghi, who was ousted in July, has attempted to smooth the transition, pushing for a cap on energy prices in Europe and setting out the narrow margins for manoeuvre in the budget.
Draghi, in his last news conference as the head of the Italian government, said: “Italy must be at the centre of the European project with the credibility, authoritativeness and determination fitting of a great country like ours.”
But Meloni’s new team is likely to struggle to reconcile the expensive electoral promises they made on pensions and tax cuts with the economic reality. A recession is forecast for next year.
European leaders indicated they were ready to work with Meloni’s government.
At the end of the European Council in Brussels, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “We are all together as European nations within the EU and it is essential that we democracies cooperate a great deal.”
“Every time that there is a change of government because of elections, as [happens] in a democracy, it cannot change the good relations that we have with the other member states or, for example, that we have between Germany and Italy … We will continue to work with very good cooperation between the countries and within the sphere of the European Union.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said: “I am ready to work with Meloni.” Macron is visiting Rome on Sunday and Monday to meet President Mattarella and Pope Francis, and said he could meet Meloni then, too. “We will see on Monday according to institutional developments, in compliance with protocol,” he said.
