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Italy’s Berlusconi addresses Forza Italia members from hospital

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday gave his first address to the public since being hospitalised a month ago, delivering a video message to party members from his hospital room.

Published: 6 May 2023 15:47 CEST
Italy's Berlusconi addresses Forza Italia members from hospital
Silvio Berlusconi attends the Italian Senate following the general elections October 2022. Photo: Andreas SOLARO/AFP.

“Here I am, here for you, wearing a shirt and jacket for the first time in a month,” the 86-year-old billionaire media mogul said in a pre-recorded address to a convention of his right-wing Forza Italia party.

Smartly dressed and sitting behind a desk with the party’s banner and the Italian flag behind him, he thanked members for their support, “which more than anything helped me overcome a very dangerous pneumonia”.

READ ALSO: Silvio Berlusconi: Italian ex-PM in hospital with leukaemia

Berlusconi was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital on April 5th suffering from a lung infection, after which doctors revealed for the first time that he has leukaemia.

He spent the first week and a half in intensive care, before being moved to a normal ward.

He had hoped to be discharged in time for the two-day party convention which began Friday in Milan, a party source told AFP earlier this week.

But in the end a film crew was brought to his hospital room on Friday to record his speech, media reports said.

Berlusconi’s doctors on Wednesday confirmed that his condition was “stable” but did not mention when he might leave hospital.

Forza Italia is a junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government and Berlusconi, the party founder, remains its president.

But despite being in the Senate, he is rarely seen in public.

He has been in and out of hospital over the past few years, notably after contracting Covid-19 in 2020.

Forza Italia has lost much of its support since its heyday, when Berlusconi was prime minister three times between 1994 and 2011.

The latest YouTrend survey put Forza Italia on just seven percent support, compared to almost 29 percent for Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party.

Their coalition allies, Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration League, are polling at around nine percent.

Berlusconi said Saturday that his party was the “backbone of this government”, present “to ensure that its decisions are truly correct, fair, balanced”.

In his 20-minute video, which was peppered with applause from the audience, he said he was ready to get back to work.

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EU

Italy’s Meloni hopes EU ‘understands message’ from voters

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Saturday she hoped the European Union would understand the "message" sent by voters in last weekend's elections, after far-right parties such as hers made gains.

Published: 15 June 2024 17:33 CEST
Italy's Meloni hopes EU 'understands message' from voters

Meloni, head of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, which performed particularly well in the vote, urged the EU to “understand the message that has come from European citizens”.

“Because if we want to draw lessons from the vote that everything was fine, I fear it would be a slightly distorted reading,” she told a press conference at the end of a G7 summit in Puglia.

“European citizens are calling for pragmatism, they are calling for an approach that is much less ideological on several major issues,” she said.

Meloni’s right-wing government coalition has vehemently opposed the European Green Deal and wants a harder stance on migration.

“Citizens vote for a reason. It seems to me that a message has arrived, and it has arrived clearly,” she said.

EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Monday to negotiate the top jobs, including whether European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen will get a second term.

Von der Leyen’s centre-right European People’s Party strengthened its grip with the vote, but her reconfirmation is not yet in the bag.

The 65-year-old conservative was in Puglia for the G7 and likely used the summit to put her case to the leaders of France, Germany and Italy.

But Meloni refused to be drawn on whom she is backing.

“We will have a meeting on Monday, we’ll see,” she told journalists.

“We will also see what the evaluations will be on the other top roles,” she said.

Italian political watchers say Meloni is expected to back von der Leyen, but is unlikely to confirm that openly until Rome locks in a deal on commissioner jobs.

“What interests me is that… Italy is recognised for the role it deserves,” she said.

“I will then make my assessments.”

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani indicated that it was unlikely any decision would be made before the French elections on June 30 and July 7.

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