Dressed in black T-shirts, their arms inked with tattoos, Fabrizio and Mameli Gamberini are on their yearly homage trip to Predappio, the birth town and burial place of Benito Mussolini.
“We’re fascists,” Mameli proudly admits as she leaves Predappio Tricolore, a souvenir shop teeming with Mussolini memorabilia, on Friday morning. “We come every year at the end of July to buy a few new keepsakes, visit his tomb and leave some flowers in his honour.”
Continue reading...Absent from parliament, Italy’s deputy PM says his party did not ask for or take money
Italy’s deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has avoided an interrogation in parliament over claims his far-right League party sought money from Russia.
In Salvini’s absence, the allegations were addressed by the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who said no evidence had emerged to diminish the trust he had “in all members of the government”.
Continue reading...Inquiry to examine corruption claims over alleged plan to channel Russian oil funds to Salvini party
Italian prosecutors have begun an investigation after claims saying Matteo Salvini’s far-right party, the League, sought funds via a Russian oil deal.
Prosecutors in Milan have opened an inquiry into possible charges of international corruption in the case. The inquiry follows an investigation by L’Espresso magazine (reported by the Guardian in February) which alleged there was an arrangement by Russian representatives, close to Vladmir Putin’s government, to sell 3m tons of diesel fuel to an Italian oil company.
Continue reading...Charity vessel carrying 41 docks in Lampedusa after two days stranded at sea
Forty-one refugees and migrants disembarked overnight at the port of Lampedusa after a charity vessel that rescued them off Libya defied an attempt by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to close ports to NGO boats.
The Italian-flagged Alex, run by the NGO Mediterranea, was escorted by the Italian coastguard and on Saturday the ship was seized by police, the captain was put under investigation for allegedly aiding illegal immigration, and the rescuees eventually disembarked. Mediterranea was fined €16.000 (£14,300).
Continue reading...Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrives in Lampedusa with 41 shipwrecked migrants
A charity rescue vessel brought 41 shipwrecked migrants into port in Lampedusa on Saturday, the second boat to defy far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s bid to close Italian ports to them.
Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrived in port where a strong police presence was waiting for them but everyone remained on board after spending two days with the rescued migrants and asylum-seekers on the sailboat.
Continue reading...Carola Rackete faces prospect of long trial for defying Italy’s ban on rescue ships
The ship’s captain facing jail after defying Italian law to bring 42 migrants into port has said she would do it all over again and hit out at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.
“People’s lives matter more than any political game,” Carola Rackete, the German captain of the migrant NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, told the Guardian.
Continue reading...Carola Rackete says act of ‘disobedience’ in Lampedusa was necessary to avert tragedy
An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.
“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.
Continue reading...The captain of an NGO rescue ship carrying 42 migrants has been arrested after more than two weeks in a standoff with Italian authorities. Carola Rackete reached Sicily on Saturday in defiance of a ban by the country’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini. She was greeted by lengthy applause from hundreds of people who arrived on the quay to support her
EU countries sending growing numbers back to country of arrival in bloc
The number of asylum seekers returned to Italy from elsewhere in Europe under a controversial EU regulation has almost tripled in five years, amid concern over their treatment in Italy and Germany.
Under the terms of the Dublin regulation, member states can send people back to their country of arrival in the EU – usually Italy or Greece.
Continue reading...Hard-right leader speaks on arrival in US of ‘common vision’ with Trump administration amid EU turmoil
Matteo Salvini has said Italy wants to be Washington’s closest partner in Europe during the hard-right leader’s visit to the US capital for talks with the Trump administration.
Salvini made it clear that he sees an opportunity to forge a closer US-Italian relationship at a time of European turmoil and alignment between populist governments in both countries.
Continue reading...New bill would fine NGOs bringing migrants on shore without permission but UN says it penalises rescues at sea
The Italian government has introduced a new security decree that would mean non-governmental organisation (NGO) rescue boats that bring migrants to Italy without permission could face fines of up to €50,000.
On Friday night the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, signed a bill on security and immigration drafted by Matteo Salvini, the far-right interior minister and leader of the Northern League party, which has been described by aid groups as a “declaration of war against the NGOs who are saving lives at sea”.
Continue reading...Three magistrates singled out over their challenges to government’s hardline immigration policies
A simmering row over the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary in Italy has erupted after the far-right interior minister publicly singled out three magistrates who have challenged his hardline anti-immigration policies.
In an escalation of his battle with the judges and the courts, Matteo Salvini said he would ask the state attorney to examine whether the magistrates should have abstained from passing verdicts in cases involving immigrants because their opinions conflict with government policy on security and immigration.
Continue reading...Italy’s debt amounts to 132% and servicing it costs more than annual education budget
The EU is poised to punish Italy over its “snowballing” spending and borrowing, putting Brussels on a collision course with the populist government in Rome.
In a move expected to raise tensions with Italy, the European commission paved the way for an initial fine of as much as €3.5bn (£3.1bn) on Wednesday after advising the country had met the threshold for disciplinary action.
Continue reading...Bickering between the League and M5S has intensified since European elections
The fate of Italy’s coalition government lies with the far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, a day after the prime minister threatened to resign if Salvini’s League and its coalition partner, the Five Star Movement (M5S), could not patch things up.
Giuseppe Conte, a law professor who was plucked from obscurity a year ago to steer the coalition, issued the ultimatum to Salvini and M5S’s Luigi Di Maio during a press conference on Monday night, urging them to set aside their many differences and “revive the spirit” of the coalition government’s early days, or seek new elections.
Continue reading...France, Germany, Italy and others go to polls on Sunday, with gains expected for nationalist parties
The western world’s largest democratic exercise is nearing its finale as tens of millions of EU citizens in 21 countries go to the polls on Sunday, the last of four days of voting in European parliament elections that will shape the bloc’s future.
Polls suggest the vote will produce a more fragmented parliament than ever before, with the two centre-right and centre-left groups that have dominated Europe’s politics forecast to lose their joint majority for the first time, and nationalist and populist forces to make gains.
Continue reading...Schoolchildren’s video presentation compared Salvini decree to 1930s racial laws
An Italian teacher has been suspended over a video made by her students that compared a security law drafted by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, to Mussolini’s racial laws, provoking a storm of protest against her suspension across the country.
Rosa Maria Dell’Aria was last week suspended for 15 days on half pay after an investigation by the education ministry’s provincial authority in Palermo found she had not “supervised” her students’ work.
Continue reading...Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen are joining with allies to create what may be the third-largest bloc in the European parliament
Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini led a rally of his European far-right allies in front of Milan’s Gothic cathedral on Saturday. He pledged to change history after this week’s EU elections by making the populist alliance one of the largest groupings in the European parliament.
Flanked by France’s Marine Le Pen and leaders from nine other nationalist parties, Salvini began his speech to the packed Piazza del Duomo by quoting the British writer GK Chesterton: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.” He added that his group would remould Europe “not for our sake, but for our children”.
Continue reading...League head attempts to burnish his credentials as leader of Europe’s far-right with home-turf rally
Nino Governale was the perfect target for the teenage Matteo Salvini. The PE teacher hailed from Sicily and could hardly get through the weekly lesson at the prestigious Alessandro Manzoni high school in Milan without being goaded by his pupil.
“Salvini was as arrogant at 14 as he is today,” Governale says. “His favourite game was to antagonise. At that time he was against all southerners – we were the enemies coming to Milan and stealing jobs.”
Continue reading...Far-right Italian deputy is hounded by photobombers after image goes viral
When two Sicilian women shared a kiss on 26 April, they kickstarted a “selfie-guerrilla’’ photobomb protest against Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.
Matilde Rizzo and Gaia Parisi, both 19, approached Salvini, the leader of the League, for a selfie after a rally in Caltanissetta, Sicily. While Salvini was preparing to smile for the photo, the trap was set by the two young women who kissed in front of the camera.
Continue reading...Antonella Bundu is the lead candidate in a coalition of anti-fascist radical-left parties
On a peaceful Monday morning in March 2018, a Senegalese street vendor named Idy Diene was murdered on the Vespucci bridge in Florence. The man who fired the six fatal shots was an Italian pensioner who told the police he had shot randomly at the first person he encountered. He had previously attempted to take his own life.
Antonella Bundu, 49, was one of the first people to arrive at the scene. She burst into tears when she was told that under the blood-stained sheet lay Diene. She had come to know him well, watching him set up and take down his makeshift table of cigarette lighters, tissues and umbrellas.
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