Meloni-Schlein, distance duel in Trento from the premierate to the superbonus

'On the premierate Elly Schlein can and will answer me'. This is the challenge of Giorgia Meloni. "We went to the confrontation with the government. The first, the only one, in June 2023. And when we went we brought six proposals to strengthen the stability of the executive with constructive no-confidence. They did not even consider it,' was the response of Elly Schlein. Both the premier and the secretary of the Democratic Party spoke from the Social Theatre of Trento as guests of the Economics Festival organised by the 24 ORE Group and Trentino Marketing on behalf of the Autonomous Province of Trento, with the collaboration of the Municipality and the University of Trento. And they do not spare themselves any stoccatas.

Where all TV has failed, the Economics Festival succeeded: confronting the two leaders. Although two hours apart, Meloni and Schlein confronted each other on the same issues and the same urgencies of the country. 'Schlein talks about poor work? Thanks to the Pd secretary because she reminds us of the disasters of the left in government,' pressed Premier Meloni at the Festival of Economics in Trento. "You can ask Schlein what she thinks of the results brought by them when they were in government. I am proud that in a year and a half we have increased wages. When we came to government the workers who were waiting for their contracts to be renewed were 54 per cent today they are 35 per cent,' suggests the premier. And she adds: 'We will try to do better, but lessons from those who drove wages down by 1.5 per cent when they were in government are not,' claims the premier. Schlein took the floor a few hours later: 'How do I respond to Meloni on the subject of labour? I have done it several times, if the left had done everything right someone like me would never have won the PD primary. But I ask her, after 19 months of government, how long does she intend to offload responsibility on previous governments instead of taking on her own?' the PD secretary replied.

"I do not need to make cash on the superbonus but to limit the haemorrhaging because our accounts do not hold it and it does not produce as much as promised, at the level of GDP," says the premier, explaining that "what we are doing on the superbonus for many is unpopular but when you travel at a cost of 220 billion euros, like the Pnrr, to renovate 4% of the buildings, you have to put a squeeze on it otherwise you risk going out of control." When the question on the superbonus is put to Schlein, a stylistic jab at the Fdi leader comes from the Dem secretariat: 'It is undeniable that the measure at the time it was taken tried to give a boost to the economy. The rebound was there. The thing that I find very hypocritical on the part of Meloni and the government is that when the extensions to the Superbonus were voted on, they voted for them. They blocked the transfer of credits in January 2023 and have done nothing in this year except give the extension to the cottages on which they have lashed out so much. They always have two faces'.

"I am not the kind of person who can repay his renunciations with vanity.... Currently my life goes like this: I get up in the morning, I try to solve problems, I go to sleep. On average I spend an hour a day with my daughter. Does anyone really think that I can do this with the sole aim of staying and doing this?' A guest at the Trento Festival of Economics, Giorgia Meloni talks about her 'sacrificed' life as prime minister, halfway between venting and being proud of her role. A life as a workaholic and Mr Wolf at the same time, ''at the service'' of citizens. The premier vindicates what her government has done so far and reiterates that she will not back down one inch on the premierate. ''For me, this life is worth it,'' the leader of Via della Scrofa assures, ''if when you're done you can look at Italy and say it was worth it. So, I want to leave something behind, and it's do or die: nobody ask me to warm the chair and stay here and survive, because I would not be the right person to hold this office'.

Hence the ''necessity'' to reform the premierate with which ''we put the decision-making pot back in the hands of the citizens''. Not only that, the premierate is a ''democratic measure and also an economic one because it guarantees the stability of a government and stability is a measure to strengthen the nation's opportunities for growth''. The government, she explains, ''came with a tale of the plagues of Egypt, it is clear that if you are presented as Attila the Hun and instead you are Giorgia Meloni, it is possible that you calm down by the very fact of being Meloni''. The prime minister explains why, despite the ailing public accounts, the rating agencies have not downgraded Italy: 'The solidity of the majority is important. Nobody wants to invest in a country in which everything changes every year. When you have time, when your majority is not always in the balance, you can also build a strategy and this makes a difference in the eyes of those who invest. We are trying to build a strategy.