Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

NORTHERN LEAGUE

Italian mayor excludes gay couples from waste disposal tax cuts

The mayor of a northern Italian town has introduced tax privileges to married couples – but only if they’re straight.

Published: 29 September 2017 18:01 CEST
Italian mayor excludes gay couples from waste disposal tax cuts
Straight couples who wed in a civil ceremony will also be excluded from the tax cuts. Photo: StockImage/Depositphotos

Seemingly unperturbed about courting more controversy, the move comes just weeks after Luigi Carozzi, the Northern League mayor of Pontida, proposed parking permits for pregnant women and young mothers, but only if they were married, straight and from the EU.

This time, in a note about tax reduction to the Lombardy town’s 3,307 residents, he wrote: “The council of Pontida has cut waste disposal tax (Tari), introducing new exempt categories. This time there are no exceptions, such as civil unions between people of the same sex.”

Among the first people to criticise the decision was Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Northern League, who said: “It is not fair, all couples are couples.”

Emanuele Fiano, an MP with the ruling Democratic Party, took to Twitter to say:

“The Northern League heads back towards the Middle Ages in Pontida, the mayor tries again: tax cuts on waste disposal, but not for gay couples.”

Only those who married in a church will enjoy the cuts, meaning straight couples who had civil ceremonies will also be excluded.

Carozzi was forced to take a u-turn on his parking permit proposal following a widespread outcry. The move was supposedly designed to improve accessibility for pregnant women and mothers of young children.

Earlier this month Pontida hosted the Northern League’s annual conference. The town was the place where, in medieval times, a group of cities came together to form a regional alliance called the Lombardy League.

NORTHERN LEAGUE

Lombardy candidate backtracks over claim that migration threatens Italy’s ‘white race’

Attilio Fontana, the leading candidate to govern Italy’s most populous region, says he made a slip of the tongue when he claimed that migration threatened to wipe out “our white race”.

Published: 15 January 2018 18:02 CET
Lombardy candidate backtracks over claim that migration threatens Italy’s ‘white race’
A Northern League supporter in Milan. Photo: Paco Serinelli/AFP

Fontana, a member of the far-right Northern League who is running for president of Lombardy with the backing of a centre-right coalition, made the comments to his party’s official radio station on Sunday.

“We can’t take in everyone here, because if we did the social and ethnic reality would no longer be us,” Fontana said during a lengthy discussion on migration.

“Because there are many more of them than us and they are much more determined to occupy this country. It isn’t a question of being xenophobic or racist, but being logical or rational. […]

“We have to decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society should continue to exist or if it should be wiped out.”

Hear Fontana's full interview above.

As opponents condemned his comments, Fontana on Monday put them down to a “slip of the tongue”, insisting he meant to say that Italy should rethink its migration policies to protect “our history and our society”.

The head of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, defended Fontana, claiming that Italy was under threat from an “invasion” and “Islamization” that – he maintained – had nothing to do with skin colour.

Fontana’s main rival for the presidency of Lombardy, centre-left candidate Giorgio Gori, urged voters to reject “hysteria and demagoguery” when they go to the polls on March 4th, the same day as Italy’s general election.

“There are those who talk of pitchforks and a white race. We’re talking about training, jobs, growth, Europe. You choose,” he tweeted.

The Northern League is currently waging its most ambitious general election campaign to date as part of a conservative coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and the far-right Brothers of Italy.

Though Salvini has dropped or diluted some of the party’s most extreme talking points – such as northern secession or quitting the euro – in a bid to make it more palatable to a national audience, he has maintained its hardline stance against immigration.

The leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), Luigi Di Maio, suggested that Fontana’s comments revealed the true nature of the League and its coalition partners.

“Berlusconi says that we’re worse than post-communists, that they’re moderates and we’re extremists,” Di Maio said. “If they’re moderates then I’m Gandhi.”

 
 Attilio Fontana. Photo: Associazione Amici di Piero Chiara/Wikimedia Commons

Fontana began his campaign just last week, after the sitting president of Lombardy, fellow Northern League member Roberto Maroni, unexpectedly announced his withdrawal from the race. Maroni, considered a moderate by League standards, cited political differences with Salvini.

Lombardy, the region containing Milan, is one of the League’s biggest strongholds. The latest poll, conducted before Fontana made his remarks, put him in first place to win the regional election with 42 percent, ahead of Gori with 37 percent.