From our correspondent in Strasbourg – From taxing the windfall profits of energy companies to flexibility on budgetary constraints, right through to security and the condemnation of street violence: Italian MEPs are divided over how to respond to the protests against high fuel prices and the cost of living, which are affecting the South in particular, with farmers and hauliers struggling with costs that are becoming increasingly difficult to bear. While the Five Star Movement, the Democratic Party, and the Green and Left Alliance are calling for the redistribution of energy profits and increased aid, Forza Italia is focusing on Member States’ spending margins, and Fratelli d’Italia is insisting on public order. In Strasbourg – where all MEPs are gathered for the European Parliament’s plenary session – the debate on the economic reasons behind the protests is intertwined with that on how to manage the demonstrations.
“The Meloni government is currently failing to provide any answers. In fact, it is turning a blind eye,” says the Five Star Movement MEP, Valentina Palmisano, who claims that people “are being squeezed by the high cost of living and high fuel prices” and “can no longer cope with the demands of daily life.” The call is to “tax the windfall profits of oil and energy companies” and redistribute them to families in difficulty. Her delegation colleague, Pasquale Tridico, presses the issue, proposing a European tax credit on diesel for farmers and hauliers, funded through a levy on windfall profits. “Over the last five months, additional diesel costs have risen by 30 per cent for the same number of litres used,” he explains, calling for at least 30 per cent of fuel costs to be covered.
The Italian Green and Left Alliance (AVS) is also calling for the taxation of windfall profits. “Half of Italy has ground to a halt. Yes, the whole of the south – lorry drivers, farmers, bakers: everyone is on strike. Prices are sky-high, with diesel over €2.30, even though ENI is making astronomical profits, and the shelves are completely empty,” MEP Benedetta Scuderi (Greens) explained in the Chamber. “Someone is making a profit, and in Italy that someone is ENI, and those profits are not being taxed so they can be redistributed,” Scuderi added to Eunews. “The aid being provided is across-the-board and not targeted, and we are not really trying to support those in our population who need it most,” she observes. “Our billions must be spent on security, yes, but on the security of our people,” with a European budget that is more socially oriented and less focused on rearmament.
It is on the issue of security that the debate and clash between the government and the opposition have flared up, with the Fratelli d’Italia MEP Paolo Inselvini pressing Scuderi. “Whose side are you on? That of the police, or that of those who, with their faces covered, are wreaking havoc in our cities?” asks the MEP, accusing Scuderi – who, in her speech, had raised the issue of tear gas canisters being fired at head height – of having “condemned the violence of the protesters,” but of having “immediately shifted the focus to alleged excesses by the police.”
Forza Italia MEP Marco Falcone focuses on the issue of protests and their causes, arguing that “Member States themselves must be allowed to implement appropriate measures to bring down the cost of living.” To this end, he is calling for “an easing of budgetary constraints” to support households and businesses. Falcone, a member of the People’s Party, points out that this period of hardship is not limited to Italy, but “is widespread” and affecting the whole of Europe.
Finally, the Democratic Party accuses the government of failing to act and criticises the lack of responses from Giorgia Meloni’s administration. “The government talks only of security and has not put a single concrete measure in place for those who can no longer work because of high fuel prices,” says the Democratic Party’s delegation leader Nicola Zingaretti. And on the subject of the EU budget, he warns: “You cannot ask Europe to intervene while, at the same time, European governments are taking away the resources it needs to do so.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
