{"id":449455,"date":"2026-04-02T17:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/04\/02\/fitto-fascista-il-vicepresidente-esecutivo-della-commissione-contestato-a-charleroi\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T18:23:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:23:34","slug":"accused-of-being-a-fascist-the-commissions-executive-vice-president-faces-criticism-in-charleroi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/04\/02\/accused-of-being-a-fascist-the-commissions-executive-vice-president-faces-criticism-in-charleroi\/","title":{"rendered":"Accused of being a “too right-wing”, the Commission’s executive vice-president faces criticism in Charleroi"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – Raffaele Fitto? A member of a far-right party, and therefore unwelcome<\/strong>. A mishap for the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission in Charleroi, in southern Belgium, where the Commissioner for Cohesion Policy went\u00a0to see how European Union funds are being used to revitalise local areas and found himself at the centre of an open and heated protest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Fitto visited the UCampus de Charleroi<\/a>, the Walloon city\u2019s university campus, to see the changes brought about by \u20ac23 million in European funding<\/strong>. Welcomed and hosted by the Minister-President of the Walloon Region, the French-speaking liberal Adrien Dolimont, the former Italian Minister for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) took part in a conference organised on campus amidst shouts, slogans, and chants from students and lecturers who criticised Fitto for his membership of Fratelli d’Italia, a party regarded by protesters as the heir to fascism.<\/p>\n

The Commission\u2019s Executive Vice-President rejected the accusations, making it clear that the party he came from has nothing to do with the former regime. \u201cThis sort of protest is ridiculous,\u201d Fitto stated emphatically. \u201cI am here to represent the European Commission; I am Executive Vice-President. I am also here to represent the values of the European Union; that is the message I want to convey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The police intervened, bringing in reinforcements, to deal with a situation that had suddenly become tense. The police managed to prevent the protesters from coming into contact with the university\u2019s “guests of honour” and escorted them off campus.<\/p>\n

The President of the Walloon Region expressed his regret: “What a disastrous image we are projecting,” lamented Dolimont. “We come here to discuss these projects and the aid Europe has given us to support the Region, and this is how we are received?”\u00a0To the Belgian press<\/a>, on the other hand, the protesters said they were satisfied: “<\/em>We are resisting. One day, we will wake up and ask ourselves: \u2018How did we end up living in a fascist country?\u2019 That is why we are taking action to prevent this sort of thing from happening, especially at a university.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the local university to inspect the use of cohesion funds, the Italian member of the European Commission is met with student protests. The Minister-President of Wallonia expresses his regret<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":449440,"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":[25712],"tags":[28979,33394],"class_list":["post-449455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-charleroi-en","tag-ue"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449455","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\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449455"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449466,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449455\/revisions\/449466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}