Centre-left Democratic Party (PD)
leader Elly Schlein said on Wednesday that Premier Giorgia
Meloni during an address to the Lower House had questioned the
1941 Manifesto of Ventotene drafted by two of the founding
fathers of the European Union while they were being held by the
Fascist regime to hide rifts within the government coalition by
offending Europe's memory.
"Giorgia Meloni not only does not have the courage of defending
the values on which the (European) Union is based from the
attacks" waged by US President Donald "Trump and by Musk, but
she has decided to hide in the House her government's divisions
by insulting the European memory.
"We don't accept attempts to rewrite history", Schlein wrote.
"Meloni insulted the memory of the Manifesto of Ventotene,
recognized by all as the basis on which the EU has been founded.
"She says that Europe is not hers.
"Then I ask her if her Italy is the one of the Constitution
because the same anti-Fascists wrote it", added Schlein.
Meloni's statement on Wednesday that the Manifesto of Ventotene
did not represent the Europe she envisions during a Lower House
debate ahead of this week's EU Council sparked a protest by
opposition members that led Speaker Lorenzo Fontana to
temporarily interrupt the session.
"I don't know if this is your Europe, but it's certainly not
mine", Meloni said of the 1941 manifesto which was circulated
within the Italian Resistance and soon became the programme of
the European Federalist Movement.
The small island of Ventotene off the coast of Lazio housed a
Fascist prison during World War II where Altiero Spinelli and
Ernesto Rossi came up with the Manifesto which encouraged a
federation of European states in a bid to prevent future wars.
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