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ITALY-POLITICS
Italy PM takes aim at migrants, austerity in maiden speech
ROME, June 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The leader of Italy’s new populist
government vowed Tuesday to redistribute migrants in the EU and review EU
sanctions against Russia, in his first policy speech to lawmakers since being
sworn in.
Giuseppe Conte addressed the Senate ahead of two parliamentary confidence
votes expected to confirm his new cabinet, formed from a coalition of far-
right and eurosceptic parties.
His eurosceptic government was sworn in on Friday after almost three
months of political turmoil that alarmed EU officials and spooked financial
markets.
A lawyer with little political and no government experience, Conte was
nominated by far-right League leader Matteo Salvini and the head of the anti-
establishment Five Star movement Luigi di Maio — both of whom are now his
deputy prime ministers.
Conte’s maiden policy speech reaffirmed several of the coalition’s key
manifesto themes, including a tough line on migrants, rejection of economic
austerity and conciliatory gestures towards Moscow.
“We want to reduce our public debt, but we want to do so with growth and
not with austerity measures,” he told senators.
“We will strongly call for the Dublin Regulation to be overhauled in order
to obtain respect for a fair distribution of responsibilities and to achieve
an automatic system of compulsory distribution of asylum seekers.”
On Russia, which faces EU sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, Conte said:
“We will promote a review of the sanctions system.”
– Summits on horizon –
Both former premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party — a campaign
ally of the League — and the outgoing centre-left Democratic Party have said
they will not vote in favour of the new government.
But the alliance between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and
far-right League is expected to pass the confidence votes in the Senate on
Tuesday and in the lower Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday as the two parties
hold a majority in both houses.
On the 53-year-old prime minister’s agenda in his first weeks in office
are a Group of Seven summit in Canada this week and a key EU summit at the
end of the month.
Conte’s low profile has fuelled speculation that he will take a back seat
to his two powerful deputies. Salvini is to be interior minister in the new
cabinet and Di Maio will hold the economic development portfolio.
Since being sworn in Conte had limited himself to a Facebook post in which
he said that he had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French
President Emmanuel Macron and would meet the two leaders at the G7 summit.
– ‘Good times over’ –
On Monday, Di Maio met representatives of food deliverers in Italy’s gig
economy.
Afterwards Di Maio described the workers as “the symbol of an abandoned
generation,” and underlined the need to give them “job security and a
dignified minimum wage”.
Salvini has wasted no time addressing immigration.
Visiting Sicily, where thousands of migrants have arrived in recent years,
he declared at the weekend that Italy “cannot be Europe’s refugee camp”.
The 45-year-old has repeatedly promised to cut arrivals and accelerate
expulsions from a country where around 700,000 migrants have arrived since
2013.
“The good times for illegals are over — get ready to pack your bags,” he
said Saturday.
European Union interior ministers are meeting on Tuesday to discuss
possible reforms of the bloc’s controversial Dublin regulation, whereby
refugees must file for asylum in the first member state they enter.
Salvini has blasted the regulation as unfairly burdening Mediterranean
countries and leading to “an obvious imbalance in management, numbers and
costs”.
BSS/AFP/RY/1755 hrs