The veto on the stability pact? “I don’t rule out any of the choices. I believe we need to make an assessment of what is best for Italy knowing that if an agreement is not found, we will return to the previous parameters. I will do everything I can.” The prime minister said it Giorgia Meloni in reply to the Senate after the discussion on his communications in view of the EU Council talking about Mario Monti’s proposal.
“The Conte government secretly gave its consent to the ESM”. This is how the prime minister continued, showing the opposition the fax sent to the then representative Massari by Luigi Di Maio in which he authorized him to sign the ESM. And this, added Meloni, happened “the day after the resignation of the Conte government, when he was only in office for current affairs. I understand your difficulty and your embarrassment, but there is no way out of the story. This paper demonstrates the lack of seriousness of a government that before packing the boxes left this package to the next government”. “We are not transferring weapons to Israel. Or are you referring to the weapons that the Conte government sold to Israel, given that the Conte government was the one that sold the most weapons to Israel of all.”
“We have stopped throwing Italians’ money out the window”
“If you have arguments, reply in reply, I don’t start shouting while you speak”, said Meloni in reply to the Senate after the discussion on his communications in view of the EU Council, addressing the Chamber in which someone was making noise during his speech. “I will always do my part to remember the disastrous policies” of previous governments “that we are called to repair. Austerity? I don’t know what you mean, we have stopped throwing Italians’ money out the window” with expenses like those for “superbonus” and “wheeled benches. It is not austerity but seriousness” and this is the reason “why the Italians asked us to govern and you to take a step back”.
“We have freed up resources for the right to education, for Emilia Romagna, we have given even more funding for healthcare. With a small technical trick the health fund has reached the maximum resources it has ever had in the fund.”
“The super bonus weighs like a boulder on our accounts and takes away 20 billion euros a year”. “It’s a provision that arose from an acceptable intention” but was transformed “into the greatest gift given by the State to scammers and criminal organizations, leaving companies and good families in a lot of trouble. A question that we are now trying to resolve” .
“No attack on Draghi”
“What I said yesterday about the photo is far from being an attack on Mario Draghi, everyone knows – explained the Prime Minister – what I think of Draghi’s firmness on Ukraine, of that majority that everyone remembers”. “What I was trying to explain – he added – is that, precisely because I respect that firmness, the work he did in the photo on the train with France and Germany cannot be resolved”.
“I also took that train to go to Kiev, I would like to remember. Imagine if I don’t understand the value it has. From my point of view there was an Italy that in the past only decided to wait for what they did France and Germany waiting to queue up in a photo. It doesn’t mean I don’t have photos of me with Macron, Scholz, Orban, with anyone.”
“In foreign policy you have to know how to talk to everyone, which is what I try to do every day knowing full well that my positions do not overlap with those of everyone else. Those who manage to dialogue with everyone are much stronger in foreign policy. If today achieve objectives is for the role of an Italy capable of communicating with everyone”.
“GDP is better with us, propaganda clashes with reality”
“During the years of centre-left government the GDP collapsed, now with us the GDP is better”. Thus Meloni continued her speech to the Senate. “The propaganda then clashes with reality”, added Meloni who then talks about the Stability Pact, recalling how the “negotiation is very tight and the starting positions are distant”. But there are some glimmers of hope,” she assured.
“Lorefice claims the size of the double-digit GDP data during the Conte governments but omits a detail: what happened while emerging from the pandemic is defined in economics as the ‘bounce of the dead cat’: even if you throw a cat out of the window and the cat dies, it bounces. The GDP in the previous year had sunk more than the GDPs of the rest of Europe had sunk, a fact I wouldn’t boast about.”
“We must be, and I am very proud, of the work done on the Pnrr, a work we have done despite the issue of a possible revision of the Plan to adapt it to a changed context, resolving some critical issues that existed in the Plans adopted by the previous ones governments despite it being considered an impossible hypothesis or downgraded to a crazy choice that would have made us lose the resources of the Pnrr, would have taken Italy out of Europe in a distorted and destructive story that does not state Italy’s role, of what we can achieve with a little pragmatism and common sense.”
“We have shown that, if done well, things can be achieved – he added -. There was more support for Italy not getting the third installment than for the Davis Cup. Despite everything we got the third, the fourth and by the end of the year we will deliver the objectives of the fifth and revised the Plan”.
“Transforming the EU from a bureaucratic to a political giant”
“I very much agree on enlargement. It is a strategic choice for all of us. Enlargement is good. If we imagined an EU with 30-32 member states this would bring new challenges. And we will talk about this, just as we will talk about of the reforms that will have to be made. We will also have to think about the budget. We must not make the mistake – Meloni highlighted again – of starting from a decision-making process, but from what the EU must deal with. The EU must concentrate on matters that cannot be addressed by individual states. This is the position I am pursuing. The European Union must be transformed from a ‘bureaucratic giant to a political giant'”.