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ITALIAN ELECTIONS

Italian parties pitch abroad in trilingual election videos

Days after Italy's far-right leader made a multilingual appeal to foreign commentators to take her seriously, her main rival in September elections issued his own tit-for-tat video Saturday condemning her record.

Italian parties pitch abroad in trilingual election videos
Enrico Letta attends the second edition of the Francophonie's Economic Forum in Paris. Photo: JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP

Former prime minister Enrico Letta, leader of the centre-left Democratic Party, declared his pro-European credentials in a video in English, French and Spanish, while deriding the euroscepticism of Italy’s right-wing parties.

It echoes the trilingual video published this week by Giorgia Meloni, tipped to take power in the eurozone’s third largest economy next month, in which she sought to distance her Brothers of Italy party from its post-fascist roots.
“We will keep fighting to convince Italians to vote for us and not for them, to vote for an Italy that will be in the heart of Europe,” Letta said in English.

His party and Meloni’s are neck-and-neck in opinion polls ahead of September 25 elections, both with around 23 percent of support.

But Italy’s political system favours coalitions, and while Meloni is part of an alliance with ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi and anti-immigration leader Matteo Salvini, Letta has struggled to unite a fractured centre-left.

Speaking in French perfected in six years as a dean at Sciences Po university in Paris, Letta emphasised European solidarity, from which Italy is currently benefiting to the tune of almost 200 billion euros ($205 billion) in
post-pandemic recovery funds.

“We need a strong Europe, we need a Europe of health, a Europe of solidarity. And we can only do that if there is no nationalism inside European countries,” he said.

He condemned the veto that he said right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor “Orban — friends and allies of the Italian right — is using every time he can (to) harm Europe”.

In Spanish, Letta highlighted Meloni’s ties with Spain’s far-right party Vox, at whose rally she spoke earlier this summer, railing at the top of her voice against “LGBT lobbies”, Islamist violence, EU bureaucracy and mass
immigration.

In English, he condemned the economic legacy of Berlusconi, a three-time premier who left office in 2011 as Italy was on the brink of economic meltdown, but still leads his Forza Italia party.

Letta’s programme includes a focus on green issues — he intends to tour Italy in an electric-powered bus — and young people, but he has made beating Meloni a key plank of his campaign.

Meloni insisted in her video that fascism was in the past, a claim greeted with scepticism given her party still uses the logo of a flame used by the Italian Social Movement set up by supporters of fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

In a joint manifesto published this week, Meloni, Berlusconi and Salvini committed themselves to the EU but called for changes to its budgetary rules — and raised the prospect of renegotiating the pandemic recovery plan.

Elections were triggered by the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government last month, and are occurring against a backdrop of soaring inflation, a potential winter energy crisis and global uncertainty sparked by
the Ukraine war.

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TERRORISM

Italy on maximum terror alert over Easter after Moscow attack

Italy was to increase surveillance in busy areas ahead of the Easter holidays and following the bombing of a Moscow concert hall, ministers agreed on Monday.

Italy on maximum terror alert over Easter after Moscow attack

Italy’s national committee for public security, chaired by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, on Monday said anti-terrorism monitoring in Italy must be strengthened ahead of the Easter holidays, with more surveillance to be carried out at popular tourist spots and at “sensitive sites”.

The committee agreed on “the importance of continuing monitoring activity, including online, by police and intelligence forces for the identification of possible risk situations” in Italy, reported news agency Ansa.

The security meeting was convened following the terrorist attack in Moscow on Friday where armed men opened fire and set the building ablaze, killing at least 133 people.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had stressed to the public on Sunday that Italy faced “no concrete risk” and said the country’s security and law enforcement services were “always on the alert to prevent any attack.”

“During the Easter holidays you will need to be very careful. We will always do the utmost to ensure the safety of citizens and tourists,” Tajani said, speaking on national broadcaster Rai’s current affairs show Restart.

READ ALSO: Terror alerts: Should I be worried about travelling to Italy?

The fight against terrorism “has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine,” the minister continued.

“We support Ukraine” as an invaded country in which international law has been violated, he said, “but as the Italian government we have expressed our condemnation of the attack [in Moscow] and closeness to the families of the victims and the survivors”.

Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano said on the same programme that the main terrorist threat Italy faced at the moment was mainly from “lone wolves” and “not so much from organised groups.”

“I believe that a group like the one that acted in the Moscow attack, which must have been trained and had logistical support, would be intercepted sooner in Italy,” he said.

“The most worrying threat” in Italy was online recruitment, he said, noting that propaganda was closely monitored.

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