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Italian PM seeks reform in Europe after winning confidence vote

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte called Monday for the reform of European Union budget rules and cooperation on immigration as his new government won a parliamentary confidence vote.

Published: 10 September 2019 10:02 CEST
Italian PM seeks reform in Europe after winning confidence vote
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte before giving his speech to parliament on Monday. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

After a heated debate, 343 MPs backed the incoming coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and centre-left Democratic Party, while 263 voted against, according to the official count.

Much of Conte's first speech to parliament earlier in the day was dedicated to chiding the previous populist coalition for endless bickering, and promising the new government would be better behaved.

The most pressing issue for the new coalition will by the upcoming 2020 budget, a key test for relations with Brussels.

READ ALSO: Four key economic challenges facing Italy's new government

Conte called for the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, which limits budget deficits to three percent of gross domestic product in member states, to be “improved” and simplified.

The pact was the main bone of contention between the European Commission and the previous populist government in heavily indebted Italy, which must submit a balanced budget to Brussels in the coming weeks.

READ ALSO: Here is Italy's new cabinet in full

Should it fail to do so, Italy could face an automatic rise in value-added tax on January 1 to bring in more funds — punishing the poorest the hardest.

However former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who heads of the country's conservative People's Party (OeVP), rejected any softening of EU rules.

“Italy must not become a second Greece. In any case, we are not prepared to pay Italy's debts!” Kurz tweeted on Monday.

Conte said the government would step up efforts to improve the lives of the poor and disadvantaged, from income support for the lowest earners to help for the disabled, earthquake victims, and working mothers, as well as tackling gender inequality.

Italy's new Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese (L) speaks to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte prior to his speech on Monday. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

He promised Italians that, after a season of bitter fighting and hate propaganda, the new watchword would be respect.

“We cannot in the coming months waste our time with disputes and clashes,” he said, adding that the government must act with “new humanism” rather than arrogance.

Fights and fascism

Demonstrators from the hard-right League and its smaller ally the Brothers of Italy party descended on the square outside parliament, some chanting “Duce! Duce!”, the title fascists used to address wartime dictator Benito Mussolini.

“We will be a serious opposition, in parliament but also among the people, from north to south, one town after another,” League leader Matteo Salvini said, slamming the new alliance between the former party foes.

The former strongman kissed and held aloft his rosary – a political use of a religious object which has irked many Catholics.

ANALYSIS: How Matteo Salvini lost his gamble to become Italy's PM – for now

Conte said the country was on the threshold of a “season of reforms”, which would work to ease Italy's colossal public debt, currently more than 2.3 trillion euros or 132 percent of GDP — the highest rate in the eurozone after Greece's.

Brussels has constantly called on the eurozone's third-largest economy to reduce its deficit and the accumulated debt. It frequently clashed with the outgoing populist government over its big-spending plans.

The previous coalition eventually agreed to reduce the annual deficit to 2.04 percent of GDP in 2019, instead of 2.4 percent.

On the hot-button topic of migration, Conte disappointed human rights activists who had hoped he would announce a sharp about-turn on Salvini's controversial immigration laws, although he did say integration measures would be boosted.

He said promises of solidarity between EU member states were not enough, and insisted that both Italy and the bloc must stop treating the migration phenomenon in crisis mode, but implement concrete measures such as humanitarian corridors.

As Conte spoke, the Sea-Watch charity tweeted that their reconnaissance plane had spotted a dinghy “in distress with around 30 people on board” off Libya “with nearly no search and rescue capacities at sea to rescue them”.

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POLITICS

‘Worrying developments’: NGOs warn of growing pressure on Italian media freedom

Media freedom in Italy has come increasingly under pressure since Giorgia Meloni's hard-right government took office, a group of European NGOs warned on Friday following an urgent fact-finding summit.

Published: 17 May 2024 17:40 CEST
‘Worrying developments’: NGOs warn of growing pressure on Italian media freedom

They highlighted among their concerns the continued criminalisation of defamation – a law Meloni herself has used against a high-profile journalist – and the proposed takeover of a major news agency by a right-wing MP.

The two-day mission, led by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), was planned for the autumn but brought forward due to “worrying developments”, Andreas Lamm of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) told a press conference.

The ECPMF’s monitoring project, which records incidents affecting media freedom such as legal action, editorial interference and physical attacks, recorded a spike in Italy’s numbers from 46 in 2022 to 80 in 2023.

There have been 49 so far this year.

Meloni, the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, took office as head of a hard-right coalition government in October 2022.

A key concern of the NGOs is the increased political influence over the RAI public broadcaster, which triggered a strike by its journalists this month.

READ ALSO: Italy’s press freedom ranking drops amid fears of government ‘censorship’

“We know RAI was always politicised…but now we are at another level,” said Renate Schroeder, director of the Brussels-based EFJ.

The NGO representatives – who will write up a formal report in the coming weeks – recommended the appointment of fully independent directors to RAI, among other measures.

They also raised concerns about the failure of repeated Italian governments to decriminalise defamation, despite calls for reform by the country’s Constitutional Court.

Meloni herself successfully sued journalist Roberto Saviano last year for criticising her attitude to migrants.

“In a European democracy a prime minister does not respond to criticism by legally intimidating writers like Saviano,” said David Diaz-Jogeix of London-based Article 19.

He said that a proposed reform being debated in parliament, which would replace imprisonment with fines of up to 50,000 euros, “does not meet the bare minimum of international and European standards of freedom of expression”.

The experts also warned about the mooted takeover of the AGI news agency by a group owned by a member of parliament with Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party – a proposal that also triggered journalist strikes.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

Beatrice Chioccioli of the International Press Institute said it posed a “significant risk for the editorial independence” of the agency.

The so-called Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium expressed disappointment that no member of Meloni’s coalition responded to requests to meet with them.

They said that, as things stand, Italy is likely to be in breach of a new EU media freedom law, introduced partly because of fears of deteriorating standards in countries such as Hungary and Poland.

Schroeder said next month’s European Parliament elections could be a “turning point”, warning that an increase in power of the far-right across the bloc “will have an influence also on media freedom”.

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