He launches the “Mattei Plan” for Africa, presses to make Italy the energy center of the Mediterranean, but in Algeria Giorgia Meloni is also hit by issues that have nothing to do with the first bilateral agreement since she took office at the Palazzo Chigi. In the courtyard of the presidential palace in Algiers, less than a quarter of an hour after the end of joint statements with the Algerian head of state Abdelmadjid Tebboune, the prime minister organizes a press point and addresses the issues that are stirring the government and most these days. This is how he speaks of the gas station strike, claiming the transparency decree, announcing that he is working on a “structural solution, which is not temporary” in the dossier on the waterfront. Then he tries to untie the knot of justice that has suddenly tightened after the Minister of Justice’s statements about anti-mafia prosecutors and wiretapping. The prime minister verbally reiterates what she wrote yesterday in the note from Palazzo Chigi: “There is an absolutely excellent relationship with Carlo Nordio, I fought so that he could be in via Arenula. I reiterate that the minister has my complete confidence.”
A face-to-face meeting will take place between the two days, but he won’t be the only minister Meloni will meet in the coming weeks. “I asked everyone to make a schedule – he stresses – I would like to work a schedule for the government works this year”.
In short, the prime minister wants an agenda with 2023 goals: a way to better coordinate the measures that are coming up at Palazzo Chigi. Among these, precisely, that which concerns the reform of justice. “This is a fundamental question – recognizes Meloni -. I am now organizing a round of meetings with various ministers, those with whom I have seen myself working less behind the emergency in recent weeks, and I would like to outline a program with all of them. of the main and important issues that this government intends to work on, and work on immediately, I believe that the one with Nordio will be one of the first meetings I will have”.
Also to discuss wiretapping, a decidedly slippery subject after Nordio’s statements. Meloni, therefore, on the one hand does not deny the Guardian of the Seals, but on the other hand points out the path of “common sense”. “I think you have to fix things that don’t work, and certainly what doesn’t work is a certain use to which interceptions are sometimes put. We all know this and I think it is an issue that needs to be addressed – he explains – . For this, there is no need for a clash between politics and the judiciary”. That is why, for the prime minister, we must “work together” to understand “where the rule of law mechanism does not work and look for the most effective solutions”. “Obviously Minister Nórdio, the judiciary, the operators of the sector know this better than I do – he remembers -, I try to put common sense in this: I don’t think that when facing these questions we should enter into conflict. People of goodwill will understand what the problems are and solve them.”
Concerns about Meloni, however, do not come only from Italy. In fact, the prime minister is concerned with how Europe will decide to act to respond to the huge investments planned by the US for companies in the area of energy transition. “The next EU Council will address the question of the competitiveness of our companies – he recalls -. My concern is that the European Commission thinks it can solve or face the problem of the risk of low competitiveness, even in the face of the Reduction of Inflation Act, only with the relaxation of state aid rules, a choice that obviously produces a greater possibility for states that have greater fiscal resources to help their companies, and on the contrary for those that have less, like ours, prevents this possibility “This also generates a distortion in the internal market. If in the first difficulty it turns out that things are going to chance and someone has more opportunities than others, in my opinion we are not doing Europe as a favor a favor”.
That is why Italy’s position is linked to the creation of a NextGenEu model sovereign wealth fund to help investments in companies or greater flexibility in existing funds and unused investments. “It is the proposal that we are going to take to Brussels. We are discussing it before the EU Council with the other nations”, including Germany, so much so that a trip by Meloni to Berlin may take place a few days before the summit in Brussels scheduled for 9-10 October.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
