Meloni nominates Fitto as European commissioner. Centre-right leaders renew coalition pact at summit

The Italian government nominates European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto as European commissioner: this was announced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during the Council of Ministers meeting after the majority summit at Palazzo Chigi between the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, the deputies and secretaries of FI and Lega Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, and the leader of Noi moderati Maurizio Lupi. The summit lasted just over three hours.

"Today I will inform President von der Leyen of the name" of Raffaele Fitto as European Commissioner "and I ask everyone to give a round of applause and good luck to Raffaele, who will have an extremely complex and at the same time exciting task ahead of him. It is a painful choice for me, I believe also for him, and for the government, but it is a necessary choice'. Thus, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is reported to have said in the Council of Ministers. 'This is a delicate and very important choice for us and for Italy in the coming years,' she added. 'Our choice falls on a person who has a great deal of experience and who has been able to govern the delegations entrusted to him in this government with excellent results.'

"Obviously we continue to work on the role that we ask Italy to play. And, despite the fact that I see many Italians rooting against an appropriate role for our nation, I have no reason to believe that that role will not be recognised. Not out of sympathy or antipathy towards our government, but more trivially because we are Italy, a founding nation, Europe's second-largest manufacturer and third-largest economy, the third-largest Member State by population, with records in so many fields. And, today, we can also count on a newfound political stability and economic solidity that few others have in the rest of Europe,' Meloni said after announcing the appointment of Raffaele Fitto as European commissioner.

In the Council of Ministers, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti presented the new budgetary procedures, including the medium-term structural plan. This was announced by the Mef.

As for the centre-right summit, "the unity of the coalition was reaffirmed, a guarantee of effectiveness and concreteness of the government action" and the leaders "are determined to continue the work started throughout the legislature, bringing to completion the reforms put in the pipeline and implementing the programme voted by the citizens". Thus in a joint note Giorgia Meloni, Matteo Salvini, Antonio Tajani and Maurizio Lupi.