Three German MEPs have demanded the expulsion of Forza Italia from the European People’s Party if they joined Meloni’s government, according to a letter published on Twitter on Wednesday (5 October).
The European Parliament’s first plenary session after the victory of right-wing parties in Italy degenerated into a slanging match, with the centre-left condemning the new alliance between the European People’s Party (EPP) and the far-right in Italy.
Socialists attacked Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia for being an ally of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), which S&D president Iratxe Garcia Perez described as “neo-fascist” in a press conference on Tuesday.
Fratelli d’Italia MEP Raffaele Fitto replied to Garcia Perez in a note sent to journalists, describing the accusation as “illusory”, regarding the “risk of a fascist drift”, while Lega (The League) MEP Marco Zanni said that “they do not accept lesson of morality from [the socialists]” in a speech during the plenary session on Wednesday.
Fratelli d’Italia, Lega and Forza Italia are, respectively, in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Identity and Democracy (ID), and European People’s Party groups, though they contested the 2018 and 2022 Italian elections in the same right-wing coalition.
S&D accusation, ECR, ID replies
Garcia Perez expressed concern about the alliances in different EU countries of conservative parties with far-right ones.
“The Italian elections are a clear example about how these alliances happen. […] Forza Italia really did not mean much than 8%. It was the sixth political force in Italy. However, they did open the door to an alliance with the extreme right, and therefore a neo-fascist group is now leading the Italian government,” said the S&D president.
“This is not just a coincidence, the very first people who congratulated Meloni happened to be Morawiecki, Abascal, or Orban himself” she added.
Fitto told Garcia Perez that she should instead “question the real and deep reasons behind the clear electoral defeat of the left in Italy”.
Two days before the elections, Berlusconi again defended Russia’s Vladimir Putin, remarking that he had invaded Ukraine “to put decent people” in charge of Kyiv.
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Garcia Perez said: “We can easily match what the consequences will be of opening the door to these extreme rights, political forces. They have extraordinary relations with the Putin administration, and anything related to Russia can bring about real problems, where unity is concerned here within the European Union.”
Italian EU lawmakers Democratic Party head of delegation Brando Benifei told EURACTIV Italy in an interview after the elections that Forza Italia is “completely enslaved” to Lega and Frattelli d’Italia.
Centre-left MEP: ‘Enslaved’ to extreme right, Forza Italia will back Orbán
Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party is “completely enslaved” to the two far-right potential coalition partners (Brothers of Italy and Lega), who back Hungary and Poland, Italian centre-left MEP Brando Benifei told EURACTIV Italy in an interview.
On 27 September, Italian …
However, EPP president Manfred Weber played down the issue, telling journalists on Tuesday that the EPP in Italy remains “the guardian” of a pro-European approach.
“Forza Italia’s result was better than expected. It was strengthened, in a way, the motivation to fight for a pro-European Italy,” Weber added.
German letter against Forza Italia
In their letter to Weber, three German MEPs, Social Democrat lawmaker and former justice minister Katarina Barley, Green MEP Daniel Freund and the liberal Moritz Körner, stated that Forza Italia should be expelled from the EPP group if they enter government with a party “that openly call for discrimination against people and that deny the most atrocious crimes in European history.”
“Fundamental European values must not be sacrificed in order to buy government participation,” they said.
“Europe’s conservatives should be an essential building block of the firewall against right-wing enemies of democracy. We must not allow it to crumble and rely on your support,” the letter reads.
[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
