Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

POLITICS

Regional voting starts in Italy in test for PM Meloni

Polling stations opened on Sunday for regional elections in Italy's two most populous regions -- polls seen as a test of the popularity of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's three-month-old government.

Published: 12 February 2023 12:16 CET

Regional voting starts in Italy in test for PM Meloni

Photo: John THYS/AFP

Home to a combined 13 million residents, the northern economic powerhouse of Lombardy and Lazio, which includes the capital Rome, will elect a new regional president and assembly members.

Candidates backed by Meloni’s hard-right coalition are expected to triumph in both regions.

Her far-right Brothers of Italy party made history by securing 26 percent in September’s legislative elections.

And in October she became Italy’s first female prime minister, at the helm of the most right-wing government in Rome since World War II.

The vote will also be closely watched for signs of tensions between Meloni and her coalition partners — Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia.

In Lombardy, regional president Attilio Fontana, a member of Salvini’s League and the candidate of Meloni’s coalition, is expected to be re-elected for another five-year term.

Further south in Lazio, right-wing candidate Francesco Rocca is expected to win in the face of a divided opposition, replacing the Democratic Party’s Nicola Zingaretti, who resigned after being elected to the national parliament last year.

Polling stations were to stay open until 11 pm local time (2200 GMT) and reopen again on Monday.

Results were expected later on Monday.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Govt source says Italy considering 'reciprocal plan' to swap refugees with US

“A reciprocal plan is currently being studied, according to which the US would host refugees present in Libya who want to go to Europe,” a source in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said.

At the same time, “some European Mediterranean states would host a few dozen South American refugees”, the source said.

The source was responding to a report by CBS News in the United States, which suggested that President Joe Biden’s administration was also in talks with Greece.

CBS said refugees would be selected at immigration offices set up by the United States last year in four Latin American countries.

It said 500 people could be sent both to Italy and Greece, though the source in Meloni’s office said that figure was “completely misleading”.

Rome is looking to accept “about 20 Venezuelan refugees of Italian origin” who would be able to work in Italy, the source said.

The plan would be “very advantageous for Italy and the European states of first arrival”, the source said, without elaborating.

A separate source at Italy’s interior ministry said Rome would “never assent to the relocation of hundreds of people on its national territory in view of its already considerable efforts in receiving migrants”.

In Athens, Greek migration minister Dimitris Kairidis dismissed the report.

“The CBS report is untrue. There is neither an agreement nor a request from the US to resettle legal immigrants in Greece,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

More than 2.4 million migrants crossed the southern US border in 2023 alone, largely from Central America and Venezuela, as they flee poverty, violence and natural disasters exacerbated by climate change.

Meanwhile Italy is among the first ports of call for migrants crossing from North Africa into Europe, recording almost 160,000 irregular arrivals by boat across the central Mediterranean last year.

Meloni’s government has made stopping irregular migration into Italy a priority.

It has sought to speed up asylum processing requests while signing new deals with departure countries.

It has also tried to deter migrants by setting up a new processing centre in Albania and limiting the activities of charities that operate rescue boats in the Mediterranean Sea.

Nearly 21,000 migrants have landed on Italy’s shores so far this year, compared to more than 50,000 in the same period last year, according to government data.

Url copied to clipboard!