Meloni: “Tax cuts are the priority; as for wealth taxes, we’ll have to wait for a different government”

Giorgia Meloni appears wearing a helmet during the video link-up with the ‘Festa del Tempo’. Interviewed by editor Daniele Capezzone, she defends the scrapping of the motor vehicle tax and immediately attacks the left over taxation: ‘As for wealth taxes, we’ll have to wait for a different government from this one, assuming one ever comes along...’.

The Prime Minister’s promise – which, as expected, will be the centre-right’s mantra during the election campaign – is this: ‘We will continue to work towards cutting taxes’. The list of achievements is long: “We’ve cut taxes on labour, on individuals through income tax, on businesses, on households, on property – most recently road tax – and we’ve exempted first homes up to a certain threshold: this is work we intend to carry forward. Some people who have always said that taxes are marvellous don’t like this work, but we do.’ Meloni confirms that the focus of the forthcoming budget will be on the middle class: ‘It is right to do this to give this nation a real boost’.

On the subject of energy, Meloni naturally hails Parliament’s approval of the enabling bill on nuclear power: ‘After 40 years, Italia once again has the regulatory framework that allows it to generate nuclear energy’, because I consider it a paradox that today we import electricity generated by nuclear power stations in neighbouring countries, yet we cannot generate nuclear energy ourselves’. When “nuclear energy is also up and running in this country, we will be less dependent on foreign sources and will therefore be less exposed to international crises which, as we have seen in recent years, are passed on to us through our energy bills”. In short: a revolution that ‘can bring about a major shift in Italian energy production and in Italians’ purchasing power’.

There was a strong focus on immigration and security. “Today we can say that Italia is no longer Europe’s refugee camp,” says Meloni, who reels off the figures on the reduction in landings in Italia “by over 80 per cent” and in the arrival of illegal immigrants “by 70 per cent” compared with 2022. She does not hold back in her criticism of the judiciary: “If all parts of the state had pulled in the same direction, we could have done even better, and I do not despair that sooner or later this may happen.” And she looks to the EU and the new return regulation, which allows for the opening of centres in third countries: “A path that was paved by Italia with the famous, much-maligned Protocol with Albania, which today, however, is also becoming a tool that the various Member States can make use of.”

According to Meloni, when it comes to migrants, Italia can chart the course for Europe, ‘rather than simply following the path laid out by others. But to do this, we need a government of patriots’. “I remember when we were told that our ideas – particularly on tackling immigration – were heretical. That they were even contrary to European legal civilisation. I am proud that today those ideas constitute European legal civilisation, given that they are now European Union regulations.”