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Elon Musk to attend Italian PM’s right-wing gathering

Billionaire Elon Musk is set to take part in a political festival organised by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy this weekend in Rome, a party spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

Published: 13 December 2023 17:14 CET
Elon Musk
Billionaire Elon Musk on the stage of The New York Times Dealbook Summit in New York in November 2023. Photo by Slaven Vlasic / Getty Images via AFP

Musk, who owns social media platform X (formerly Twitter), in September backed Meloni’s government in a row over Germany’s funding of charities that rescue shipwrecked migrants in the Mediterranean.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who recently struck a deal with Meloni to establish two centres for migrants rescued by the Italian coastguard in his country, is also expected at the four-day Atreju festival in Rome, which opens on Thursday.

However, the spokesman for Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party was unable to confirm speculation that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would also attend. Downing Street declined to comment.

READ ALSO: Musk says cage fight with Zuckerberg will be at ‘epic location’ in Italy

Meloni helped found the Atreju festival in 1998, when she was part of a far-right youth organisation. The gathering has since become an annual event for the political right, although it has also drawn centre-left politicians.

Former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon attended in 2018, as he sought to create a pan-European right-wing movement, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made an appearance the following year.

Back then, Meloni’s party, which she helped found in 2012, was still a marginal force in Italian politics.

In September 2022 she stunned Italy’s allies by winning the general elections, in large part on a promise to end mass migration into the country.

READ ALSO: How has Italy’s ‘anti-immigrant’ government changed the rules for foreigners?

She took office in October 2022 as the first woman to lead Italy, at the helm of a coalition including Matteo Salvini of the far-right League and former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia party.

The guests this weekend also include Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, according to the official programme.

Spain’s Socialist party on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Abascal over comments suggesting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would meet a dictator’s end and be strung up “by his feet”.

Meloni is due to make a speech on Sunday at the festival, which was named after a character in fantasy novel and later film series “The Neverending Story”.

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POLITICS

Italy’s Meloni criticises her own government’s ‘Big Brother tax’ law

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday criticised an "invasive" tax evasion measure reintroduced by her own government, sparking accusations of incompetence from opposition lawmakers.

Published: 22 May 2024 17:12 CEST
Italy's Meloni criticises her own government's 'Big Brother tax' law

The measure, allowing Italy’s tax authorities to check bank accounts to look for discrepancies between someone’s declared income and their spending, was abolished in 2018 but its return was announced in the government’s official journal of business this week.

Meloni had previously been strongly critical of the ‘redditometro’ measure, and took to social media on Wednesday to defend herself from accusations of hypocrisy.

“Never will any ‘Big Brother tax’ be introduced by this government,” she wrote on Facebook.

Meloni said she had asked deputy economy minister Maurizio Leo – a member of her own far-right Brothers of Italy party, who introduced the measure – to bring it to the next cabinet meeting.

“And if changes are necessary, I will be the first to ask,” she wrote.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who heads the right-wing Forza Italia party, also railed against what he called an “obsolete tool”.

He called for it to be revoked, saying it did not fight tax evasion but “oppresses, invades people’s lives”.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, said it was “one of the horrors of the past” and deserved to stay there.

Opposition parties revelled in the turmoil within the governing coalition, where tensions are already high ahead of European Parliament elections in which all three parties are competing with each other.

“They are not bad, they are just incapable,” said former premier Matteo Renzi, now leader of a small centrist party.

Another former premier, Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, asked of Meloni: “Was she asleep?”

The measure allows tax authorities to take into account when assessing someone’s real income elements including jewellery, life insurance, horse ownership, gas and electricity bills, pets and hairdressing expenses.

According to the government, tax evasion and fraud cost the Italian state around 95 to 100 billion euros each year.

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