The centre-right will govern Italy for the next 10 years, Vice Prime Minister and League leader Matteo Salvini said during the presentation of the League’s candidates for the upcoming regional elections in Lombardy in Milan on Saturday.
The centre-right government has grappled with the fuel price issue, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (FDI/ECR) has put her allies back in line. The next challenge on the agenda will be federalism, a divisive reform that will split the majority.
“The left should give up, we will govern this country for the next ten years”, said Salvini in Milan on Sunday, where he spoke during the presentation of the League’s candidates for the upcoming regional elections in Lombardy.
“We have a beautiful team in the Council of Ministers (…) friends who sometimes start from different assumptions but always find a common synthesis”, he added.
The government has managed the fuel price chaos by introducing new rules to quell the speculation that, according to the executive, caused the price rise. However, the controversy is not abating as there will be a protest against the new decree on Thursday.
First Forza Italia and then the League have given signs of uncertainty, showing that they did not fully support the decisions taken by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has intervened to bring the allies back in line.
“I hope, and I am certain, that we will have five years (of government) despite the attempts of a good part of the opposition, and not only, to do anything to put a spoke in the wheels,” said the premier during the Fratelli d’Italia convention held in Milan on Saturday.
“Those who think they are putting themselves in front of everyone’s destiny are wrong. We want to bring home the results, everything else does not interest us”, Meloni added.
The government’s next challenges, as anticipated in the election programme, are federalism and presidentialism. The former is a reform dear to the League, the latter to Fratelli d’Italia.
Transport and Infrastructure Minister Salvini reassured his party’s voters, coming mainly from northern Italy, that the promised regional autonomy will be realised by the end of the year.
“We are people who keep our word,” the League leader stressed.
The citizens of Lombardy and Veneto voted for regional autonomy in the 2017 referendum when the ‘Yes’ vote won overwhelmingly. Both are among the richest regions in the country.
“I am sure that after 30 years of battles, thanks to a serious and compact centre-right in government and the important presence of the League, autonomy will be a reality by 2023,” the minister promised.
The reform of regional autonomy would grant greater powers to the regions on certain competencies. Promised for years and never achieved, regional autonomy has always sparked debate and will again this time be difficult to achieve.
Each party has a different sensibility, both in the majority and in the opposition, especially with regard to the allocation of economic resources.
Forza Italia’s national coordinator and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (Fi/EPP) recently declared that “Italy must not be divided” and above all “the reform must not penalise the South” of the country, namely the poorest part of the country.
(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)
Source: euractiv.com
