{"id":440480,"date":"2025-11-20T16:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/11\/20\/ppe-ed-estrema-destra-bloccano-una-missione-del-parlamento-europeo-sullo-stato-di-diritto-in-italia\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T16:50:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T15:50:46","slug":"epp-and-far-right-block-european-parliament-mission-on-rule-of-law-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/11\/20\/epp-and-far-right-block-european-parliament-mission-on-rule-of-law-in-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"EPP and far right block European Parliament mission on rule of law in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; The right-wingers in the European Parliament shield&nbsp;<span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\">the Italian government:&nbsp;<strong>the People&#8217;s Party, together with conservatives, patriots, and sovereignists, has blocked a mission to Rome<\/strong>&nbsp;by the EU Parliament&#8217;s rule-of-law<\/span>&nbsp;monitoring group. The Democratic Party and the 5-Star Movement are on the rampage: Nicola Zingaretti urges, &#8220;What are they afraid of?&#8221;, while Gaetano Pedull\u00e0 speaks of &#8220;a shameful self-censorship to save Giorgia Meloni.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, coming to the PM&#8217;s rescue is what in Brussels&nbsp;<strong>some are starting to call the &#8220;Giorgia majority&#8221;<\/strong> (as opposed to the &#8220;Ursula majority&#8221;, with liberals and socialists), formed precisely by the EPP, ECR, PfE, and ESN. Along the lines of precisely the government coalition in Italy, with its three souls: Forza Italia, Fratelli d&#8217;Italia, and Lega, which in Europe sit respectively on the Popular, Conservative, and Patriotic benches.&nbsp;According to the newspaper<a href=\"https:\/\/Politico.eu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> <em>Politico.eu<\/em><\/a>, the affair dates back to yesterday afternoon (19 November), during the Conference of Presidents (CoP), which brings together the leaders of the political groups in the EU Parliament and its president, Roberta Metsola.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The EPP has reportedly decided <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/11\/13\/centre-or-right-the-epp-calls-the-shots-in-the-european-parliament-yes-to-2040-climate-target-no-to-due-diligence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">once more<\/a> to align itself with the extreme right-wing party, breaking its &#8220;pro-European platform&#8221; commitments and <strong>scuttling&nbsp;a planned visit by MEPs to Italy to assess the rule of law<\/strong> and respect for fundamental rights in the country. The mission had already been agreed by popular, socialist, and liberal MEPs in the Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE), as part of a package of similar visits, including to Spain, to examine concerns about the rule of law in the socialist-led country. In the current legislature, the monitoring group, chaired by Belgian Liberal<strong> Sophie Wilm\u00e8s<\/strong>, has already organised a series of hearings and missions to several member states.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_430400\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-scaled.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-430400 \" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-scaled.jpg 2560w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-750x500.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750326022676_20250619_EP-187222A_LD1_0973-Enhanced-NR-1140x760.jpg 1140w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-430400\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The leader of the Populars, Manfred Weber, and the co-chair of the Conservatives and Reformists, Nicola Procaccini (FdI) (photo: Laurie Dieffembacq\/European Parliament)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px\">\n<p>When the group leaders gave the go-ahead, EPP leader <strong>Manfred Weber<\/strong> allegedly betrayed the agreement. &#8220;The Italian right-wing is failing in its goals of government; it is afraid and seeks constant enemies. Today, it is blocking the European Parliament&#8217;s mission to monitor the situation regarding the rule of law and the press in Italy. <strong>What is it afraid of?<\/strong>&#8221; attacked the PD delegation leader in the EU&nbsp;Parliament, <strong>Nicola Zingaretti<\/strong>. As reported by <strong>Gaetano Pedull\u00e0<\/strong>, MEP of the 5 Star Movement and member of the monitoring group in question, <strong>the mission &#8220;had already been approved by the coordinators of the LIBE committee<\/strong> with the favourable vote of German MEP Lena Dupont, of the EPP. For Pedull\u00e0, we are faced with &#8220;a shameful self-censorship orchestrated by right-wing political groups to save the Meloni government.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px\">Strong criticism also came from <strong>Alessandro Zan<\/strong>, vice-president in LIBE and part of the working group on the rule of law: &#8220;The right-wingers are trying to cover up our work, and the EPP has allied itself with the extreme right, breaking the pacts made with the progressive groups in an agreement already signed,&#8221; reconstructed Zan, adding that &#8220;this <strong>irresponsible behaviour undermines the credibility of the European Parliament<\/strong> and weakens actions in support of the rule of law, fundamental rights, the fight against corruption, the independence of the judiciary, the press and LGBTQIA+ rights.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px\">In the dem delegation,&nbsp;<strong>Sandro Ruotolo <\/strong>also joined the attack, describing the incident as &#8220;an alarming signal and a dangerous precedent.&#8221; The MEP relaunched: &#8216;We will not be intimidated. <strong>We will repropose the mission<\/strong>. Democracy is not erased by majority rule.&#8221;<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Conference of Presidents, popular leader Manfred Weber aligns himself with the extreme right and scuppers an already planned visit to Italy by the rule of law monitoring group. Zingaretti (PD): &#8220;What are they afraid of?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7527,"featured_media":373196,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26180,26988,29450,26238,26990,26302],"class_list":["post-440480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-conference-of-presidents-en","tag-majority-ursula-en","tag-manfred-weber-en-2","tag-ppe-and","tag-state-of-right-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7527"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440480"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440483,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440480\/revisions\/440483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}