Meloni: 'Hypothesis to review Transition 5.0 in Pnrr review. On waiting lists I make an appeal to the regions'.

Still responding to Renzi, the PM noted that 'on strategic dossiers we have inherited some slightly compromised situations that we are trying to fix one by one'.

"As for resigning in the event of defeat in the referendum, Senator Renzi, I would also gladly do so but I will never do anything that you have already done," the Fdi leader added in her response to the former premier and Pd secretary.

Many of the questions put by the senators to the Prime Minister were on foreign policy. 'It is not easy to summarise in three minutes what he has done in foreign policy, I can say,' said Meloni, 'that he has had from my point of view in these years a clear identity and a protagonism that has belied those who had predicted Italian isolation with the advent of the centre-right government.

On the subject of tariffs, Meloni clarified that the ten billion in investments by Italian companies in the United States, mentioned after the meeting with Donald Trump, 'is not a promise of mine: before I left, I limited myself to surveying the investments that were already planned and I used this figure to remind myself of how interconnected our economies already are, precisely to reach the goal of finding a solution to avoid a trade war'. Responding to Avs group leader Peppe De Cristofaro, Meloni said: 'I merely pointed out that there is a work that has always been done on US investments in Italy and Italians in the US, and we are both committed to strengthening those reciprocal investments. For example, in the joint statement with President Trump there is a reference to the Special Economic Zone. You should be pleased,' he continued, turning to De Cristofaro, 'with the focus on attracting investment particularly in southern Italy.

Regarding the conflict in Ukraine, 'we have always been and will continue to be at Ukraine's side,' Meloni said. Today we support the US administration's efforts for a just, lasting peace that cannot disregard effective security guarantees for the aggrieved nation, we renew the urgency of an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, the hope that Russia will concretely demonstrate its will to build peace because Ukraine has already done so'.

"In the Middle East,' she continued, 'we continue to work for a permanent end to hostilities and we are attentive to and support the work that the Arab countries are doing. The Arab countries are the key to a permanent solution to the conflict. There is a credible reconstruction plan in Gaza that they have brought forward, and also to draw a general framework for peace and security, a framework that we believe must also include the prospect of two states'.

As for the crisis of the last few hours between India and Pakistan, 'the government,' Meloni said in her speech in the Chamber, 'is following the new tensions between India and Pakistan, also in contact with our allies. I know someone has asked for the government to report in the House, we are ready to do so'.

As far as fiscal policy is concerned, responding to a question from the FI group leader in Palazzo madama, Maurizio Gasparri, Meloni indicated the government's strategy: "I think our commitment must be to continue along this line with goals that are, that must be increasingly ambitious in supporting families. We started with the most economically fragile households, we tried to help them recover their lost purchasing power, I think the challenge here is to gradually broaden the target group, to focus now on the middle class'.

It is now necessary to focus, the premier continued, 'on the middle class, just as I think we must continue to work to support businesses, where the most complex and most ambitious goal we are setting ourselves is to succeed in structurally lowering the cost of energy, which weighs like a boulder on the competitiveness of our companies'.

Still on the subject of businesses, responding to the president of the M5S senators, Stefano Patuanelli Meloni clarified that on Transition 5.0 'we have been working in recent weeks with the European Commission to make it simpler and more accessible for businesses, and the first results in terms of draught are being seen'. On Transition 5.0, the premier continued, 'we have no problem assessing the real growth curve in the coming weeks and possibly redesigning its use in harmony with the nature of the resources. It is an option that the government has already put forward at the table with the productive categories in the context of that work on revising the NRP that we intend to initiate with the European Commission'.

One answer from the Prime Minister was on waiting lists in healthcare. 'I have to make an appeal to the regions,' he said, responding to a question from the president of the PD senators Francesco Boccia. "We," he added, "allocate resources that we do not manage, the regions manage them, OK? But for the oppositions the responsibility lies with the government. So what has the government done? It has made a decree on waiting lists' with which it can 'possibly intervene with substitutive powers when it fails' and 'we try to lend a hand. The regions,' the premier stressed, 'transversally in this case I do not agree, but at least the Italians know that we have these difficulties because otherwise we are simply the ones who have to allocate the money and be responsible for what does not work. There is a problem in this that I point out'.

On migratory flow management policies, Meloni emphasised that 'by the end of this week over 25% of the migrants detained in Albania will have already been repatriated in times that are very fast, demonstrating how the strategy and procedures we have put in place, despite attempts to block them for clearly ideological reasons, are working. We want an Italy that is finally capable of enforcing the rules, of being intransigent with those who commit crimes, and of defending the security of honest citizens,' stressed the leader of Fratelli d'Italia.

One question to the premier was on the drama of feminicides. To the text introducing the crime of feminicide, the premier said in the chamber, 'Parliament will be able to make the changes it deems appropriate to make it more effective, I believe that this is the place to present its proposal and broaden the spectrum of the crime'.

Premier Time' thus records a repartee between Meloni and Renzi. Renzi, on behalf of his group, asks a question on several points, from the position on the internationalisation of the government, to the promised constitutional reforms to the preference system, and concludes that the premier has changed her mind on almost all of them, calling her "champion of incoherence". Meloni took the floor in a sarcastic tone: 'I honestly missed the question', and premised that she had 'inherited a somewhat compromised situation'.

"We believe there is great confusion on a subject on which there can be no confusion: that of defence and national security," observed Action leader Carlo Calenda, in his speech in the chamber at Palazzo Madama. "Minister Crosetto's statements on the inadequate army in this geostrategic context are clear. Without a waiver to the Stability Pact, a Defence at the height of the times is not possible. But the twist is that Minister Crosetto said that the 2 per cent will be achieved by shifting budget items. This is a three-card game that cannot be accepted for a great country. Objectively, I am partially satisfied. I would like to know if we buy a few more missiles, if there is a budget allocation that increases and to what extent it increases. If we face this phase of history with an army with an average age of 59, we become a C-country. That I have to remind the Italian right of this seems surreal to me,' Calenda concluded.