Brussels – “We will call on Giorgia Meloni to break her silence and clearly condemn neo-fascist groups in Italy:” the Liberals in the European Parliament explicitly called out the Prime Minister for the Roman salute commemoration at Acca Larentia. The spokeswoman for the RE Group, Catherine Laurence Martens-Preiss, makes it clear that the January 16 debate inserted at the last minute on the agenda of the House session of the European Parliament is a moment that marks the distance between the European Parliament from Italy and its current political class.
The customary presentation of the plenary session preceding the work of the EU Parliament in Strasbourg notes how there is widespread concern in the hemicycle not only about scenes from the twentieth century but about the political turn the country seems to have taken. “We find even more puzzling the silence of the prime minister and wonder why she has not condemned” the events of January 7, said Ewan MacPhee, spokesman of the Social Democrats (S&D), who does not name the head of government, ever. Not even when he underlines how “the debate is necessary and Parliament needs to do what the Italian prime minister failed to do,” which is to condemn what happened.
The Conservatives (ECR), where Fratelli d’Italia sits, anticipate that during the debate next Tuesday, Meloni’s party’s MEPs will take the floor and that the message will be that the party and their members “are distant from such activities,” the group’s spokesman, Michael Strauss, assures. Then, to fend off assaults from other groups, he says: “We have nothing against the debate, but it seems to us that it is politically motivated and points to a juxtaposition with the current government.”
Strauss, however, touches on the real crux of the matter, of compromised credibility in the wake of an incident that inevitably ends up affecting the government, as evident in the remarks being made by La Sinistra spokeswoman Sonja Giese to the country and its current leader. “Every democrat must consistently oppose right-wing extremism, fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism,” she stresses, also without mentioning the premier, whose democratic nature she publicly questions. Certainly, not a good situation for a founding country of the EU.
