Historic moment Sunday morning in Rome, when outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi passed the torch to post-fascist Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to lead a government in Italy. The transfer of power took place under the gilded Palazzo Chigi, the seat of government a stone’s throw from parliament, exactly a century after Mussolini, of whom Meloni was an admirer, came to power.
It still recognizes today that the dictator Benito Mussolini (1922-1945) had “accomplished a lot”, without exonerating him from his “errors”: the anti-Jewish laws and the start of the war. She also affirms that in her party “there is no place for those nostalgic for fascism, nor for racism and anti-Semitism”.
Upon her arrival on the red carpet installed for the occasion, Giorgia Meloni, dressed in a black pantsuit and white blouse, reviewed the guard of honor to the sound of the brass band. Visibly moved, she was greeted at the top of the stairs by Mario Draghi, who wished her “welcome” and then received her for a head to head lasting more than an hour.
This essentially ceremonial stage was marked by the symbolic handing over by Mario Draghi to his successor of the silver bell used by the President of the Council to regulate the debates in the Council of Ministers. Under the lenses of the cameras, she waved the bell, with Draghi at her side.
Aged 45, Georgia Meloni, will be at the head of the most right-wing government in the country since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946. Mario Draghi, ex-head of the European Central Bank (ECB) much appreciated on the international scene and in particular in Brussels, had been at the head of the executive since February 2021. At the end of the ceremony, he left the Chigi Palace, also parading in front of the guard of honor to the sound of the brass band.
A meeting with Macron?
This ceremony was to be followed by the first Council of Ministers, essentially devoted to making contact between the new ministers and to administrative tasks. It was then that serious things began for the Prime Minister, faced with many challenges, mainly economic, starting with the energy crisis, inflation and the debt, whose ratio is the highest in the euro zone after the Greece.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is traveling to Rome this Sunday where he will see Pope Francis and deliver a speech on peace, could be the first foreign head of state to meet Goergia Meloni, although no talks are scheduled for this stage.
Olivier Véran, spokesman for the French government, however, left open this Sunday the possibility of a meeting between Emmanuel Macron and the new Italian Prime Minister during the trip to Rome and the Vatican of the French president.
“Nothing is excluded at the time I am speaking to you”, he repeated during the political program of CNEWS, Europe 1 and Les Échos: “He is going to the Vatican to meet the Pope (… ). If he needs to meet the Prime Minister, it is up to him to decide, and if the conditions are not met, it will be for another time. Emmanuel Macron said on Friday “ready to work” with Georgia Meloni but clarified that he would not meet her in Rome, unless it was “useful”.
On Saturday, the European Union, reluctant to face the coming to power of the far right, said it was ready to “cooperate” with the Meloni government, a welcome marked by the congratulations of its three major institutions: Ursula von der Leyen for the European Commission, the President of the European Council Charles Michel and the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola.