Manoeuvre, OK for amendment to strengthen defence. Crosetto: 'Only bureaucratic simplification'

Green light from the Senate Budget Committee to the amendment on arms production and trade reformulated by the government on the expansion of defence bases and strategic programmes. "In order to protect the essential interests of state security and to strengthen the defence industrial capabilities related to the production and trade of weapons, war material and weapons systems, with one or more decrees of the Minister of Defence in agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport are identified also with reconnaissance functions, and in any case within the resources provided for by the legislation in force, the activities, areas and related works, as well as infrastructure projects, aimed at the construction, expansion, conversion, management and development of defence industrial capabilities, qualified as being of strategic interest for national defence,' the text reads.

The solution could increase the divisions in the government, considering that the League on more than one occasion has put the brakes on a new arms decree. Most recently, on Wednesday 17 December, when speaking to 5 minutes interviewed by Bruno Vespa, Matteo Salvini clarified the party's position on this issue: 'We need a change of pace for the new decree on weapons,' he emphasised, 'we will vote for them if there are innovations compared to past years. We will have to talk about defence and not attack'.

In the meantime, however, this majority amendment to the Budget Bill outlines measures for the expansion and adaptation of a number of existing military bases functional to certain programmes of strategic interest to the Defence: examples of these measures could concern, according to Radiocor, the areas for testing and trials of the new tanks and infantry vehicles produced by Leonardo-Rheinmetall or the F-35 training runway at the Trapani-Birgi. This is what we learn about the government's reformulation of previous amendments by Forza Italia, Fratelli d'Italia and the League to the budget bill in the Senate, which provides for the identification of areas, works and infrastructure projects for the 'expansion, conversion, management and development of defence industrial capabilities'.

Many newspapers today report the 'news' of an amendment to the budget law, approved by the government, that would "allow the reconversion of factories and industrial companies to the production of armaments through accelerated procedures". And they call it information. In the same groove of superficiality we find statements by various politicians. For the sake of truth, about which no one seems to be interested by now, I feel it is my duty to inform you that the amendment in question, contrary to what has been written and said, is neither aimed at 'transforming Italian factories into places of arms production' nor, even less, at 'transforming the Italian economy into a war economy''. This was clarified by Defence Minister Guido Crosetto in a note. "The amendment - which is also a parliamentary initiative and not proposed by Defence - is consistent with the European guidelines recently outlined by the European Commission as part of the so-called omnibus defence package, and contributes, in particular, to a reconnaissance of the areas in which defence industrial complexes already exist, in order to allow for administrative simplification and reduction of bureaucratic burdens on these sites, without any intention or possibility of extending this accelerated bureaucratic course to others. "Thelegislative intervention," Crosetto continues, "has a circumscribed and clearly defined objective: to strengthen the industrial and infrastructural capabilities of the defence sector, without introducing any structural or systemic changes to the country's general economic structure. These are therefore measures aimed at making already existing processes more efficient, accelerating the development of strategic industrial and infrastructural capacities, without indiscriminate extensions or reconversions of the national productive fabric. Before writing or talking nonsense, it would be advisable to inform oneself

Opposition criticised. "That this manoeuvre was a war manoeuvre was by now clear and we have been denouncing it for months, but with the amendment with which the majority gives a further boost to the production and trade of weapons, all of Giorgia Meloni's hypocrisy is revealed,'' Riccardo Ricciardi, leader of the M5S group in the Chamber of Deputies, attacked in a note. Citizens' money is being used, not for health care, not for schooling, not for transport, but to stir up international tensions and thus enrich the big arms lobbies close to Von der Leyen, Crosetto and this executive. Italians are tired of being bombarded by the psychological terrorism of those who speak of alleged foreign invasions only to create the political conditions necessary to justify the economic and financial speculation behind rearmament. As a Movement, we will do everything to counter this drift and assert the reasons of millions of citizens'.