“If anyone thinks that situations like this can serve to weaken the government, I fear that will not happen.” This was said by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, speaking at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, regarding the Sangiuliano case. “I think he did a good job and he should be thanked for that.“, added the Prime Minister speaking about the resignation of the Minister of Culture.
“What happened?” Meloni said, speaking about the story. “Andrea Malaguti, director of ‘La Stampa’, explained it well. We have been talking about the private life of a minister for days and it goes without saying that when we talk about it for days, his public life is over. And that’s how it is. There are only two elements that need to be considered in this statement. The first is that director Malaguti confirms that this is a private life story, because today Minister Sangiuliano has resigned but there are no illegalities committed. The second question is that we have been arguing for days…but arguing who?”
According to the Prime Minister “there was a strong media campaign on a private matter of the ministerwhile it remains true that the minister made a mistake, that he transformed a private matter into a public matter”. For Meloni, this is “a previous game that I do not intend to play, and it is the reason why I did not initially accept the minister’s resignation”. Yesterday, however, “I accepted it because he presented it as irrevocable, because the minister wanted to free himself from the condition of minister in order to better defend himself because he understood, as I do, that the authority and role of the government could not continue to be subjected to this media pressure”.
“As they say – added Meloni – ‘the king is dead, long live the king’. A minister has resigned, good luck to the new one”. Yesterday, when the press was expecting Sangiuliano’s resignation, the prime minister explained, “I was already at the Quirinale to sign the nomination of the new minister, because I intend to do my job well until the end of the legislature and I also think that Italians understand a certain double standard”.
Meloni also said she was “very struck by the disproportion of articles dedicated to the minister’s private affair compared to those dedicated to an investigation that the Perugia prosecutor’s office has carried out and which tells of state officials who for years have made hundreds of thousands of illegal accesses to national databases to reasonably blackmail people”.
As for Sangiuliano, “I think the work the minister has done has been very important,” Meloni emphasized, “it has been very important to have significantly increased the revenue of the many cultural institutions that Italy has, and that it was a very intelligent choice to close the Italian shame of museums and archaeological sites closed during holidays.” Furthermore, she added, “I think it was beautiful and important to start projects that had been at a standstill for decades. I’m thinking of the former hospital for the poor in Naples, of expanding the Uffizi, and also of reforming the rules on contributions to cinema, on which we had seen many things that didn’t work.”
The government, she reiterated, “did what it had to do, for me it is very important that the government maintains its authority”. The prime minister also hoped “that we can move forward and that the new minister Alessandro Giuli can continue the excellent work done by Gennaro Sangiuliano”.
Finally, on Maria Rosaria Boccia, “I don’t think I should argue with her,” said the Prime Minister, who then added: “My idea of how a woman should earn her space in society is the opposite of that of this person.”
Meeting with Zelensky
At Villa d’Este, the Prime Minister met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who yesterday participated in the first day of work. The meeting, which began around 9:20, lasted about 40 minutes. When journalists asked her how the meeting went, the Prime Minister replied: “Good”. The same response came from the Ukrainian President who, intercepted by reporters, replied: “Very good”.
“The interview with Zelensky? We discussed how to continue working to ensure legitimate defense and to achieve a just peace.“, Meloni said later during her speech. “The theses I supported two years ago on Ukraine are the same ones I support now as Prime Minister: we must not give up on Ukraine and we must continue to support it”.
“We must stop believing Russian propaganda, Ukraine’s fate is not sealed. I have been hearing for months and months – Meloni said – that Ukraine is losing the war while Russia is winning: the conflict in Ukraine was born with the idea of a ‘lightning war’ that in a few days should have led to the conquest of Kiev by Russia: this did not happen, Russia is not winning the war, but we are in a stalemate of the conflict. “In February 2023 – the Prime Minister explained – Russia controlled 17.3% of Ukrainian territory, after a year of war it controls 17.5: we contributed to creating this stalemate, supporting Kiev because at the beginning of the invasion there was an enormous disproportion of forces in the field”, she concluded.
Europe
Speaking about Europe, Meloni highlights that “there is a problem of competitiveness. I find myself in the phrase that says ‘America innovates, China replicates and Europe regulates’. It is an extraordinary snapshot of the context, because that is how it is. Europe thought that its main role was to regulate everything but I don’t think that the solution is to regulate, the solution is to regulate less”. “I think that Europe in this scenario can be stronger if it deals better with the matters on which the nation states cannot compete alone and less with those on which the nation states have a proximity on which by regulating they are able to better defend their specificities – she added -. If we continue to think of solving the problem of our production system and competitiveness by adding rules I fear that we risk not helping our businesses”.
Relationship with USA
“I reassure you about the relationship between Italy and the United States, no matter what happens, and in my opinion we also need to be calm about the relationship between the US and Europe”. “In the history of the US, the debate on an isolationist tendency is quite recurrent – he observed -. For a nation that has that geographical size and that economic strength, it is also normal to ask whether it is not more useful to ignore what happens outside the national borders, but pay attention to today’s geoglobal balances”.
In 1990, Meloni explained, “the EU with 12 member states was worth 26.5% of global GDP. Today the EU with 27 member states is worth 16% of global GDP. In 1990 China’s GDP was 1.8% of global GDP and today it is at 18%, the US is at 26%. It is true that the US is strong but it is also true that in an alliance system you can be stronger”.
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