ROME (ITALPRESS) – “We need to agree on an investment and revitalization plan: the time has come to turn things around.” This was said by Renata Polverini (Forza Italia), interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the Italpress news agency’s “Primo Piano” column, about Stellantis, an issue that “comes from afar: we are talking about a group that has the French government inside. We at some point decided that everything Europe said was law and so, for example, we privatized all our public “jewels” and looked at Fiat as the house of the Agnellis. Actually that sector was driving our economy, we had to look at it as a state interest, which we did not do,” unlike the French. “That makes the difference today: at some point the Agnellis decided to disinterest themselves in their industrial project.” When Fiat with Sergio Marchionne exited Confindustria, “perhaps an alarm should have been raised, and instead that gesture was underestimated as well. Already with Sergio Marchionne, Fiat and its owners looked with interest to the financial world, but he still kept the issue of industrial policy firm. Tavares will probably take a lot of money because he did what the Agnelli family asked him to do-I don’t think he did it on his own initiative.” Now “I’m amazed that a strong premier like Giorgia Meloni still hasn’t been able to get John Elkann and sit him down at Palazzo Chigi to get a good explanation of what he wants to do, without making a lot of controversy, because there are thousands of families who depend on these industrial choices.” Another economic issue is wages. “I who have always been against the minimum wage today tell my government to think for a moment, because I think that at least in a first phase the minimum wage can help. I have seen that in all the countries where it was introduced, at least in the beginning, it raised the level of wages. This is a reflection that I think needs to be done, beyond the ideological issue. If we have reached this point, it also means that collective bargaining has not worked,” he recalled. “If I were the government, I would try to turn the issue of wages around between those, unions and employers, who have the responsibility of bargaining because if we think of doing it only with the tax lever, we risk putting a lot of resources but not providing that necessary effect.”At the international level, Italy is strengthened and “Giorgia Meloni is surprising everyone: she was described as a leader who would put Italy in a position of isolation, instead right now she is putting herself in the position that Silvio Berlusconi had for so many years,” through “a personal relationship with world leaders that helps a lot. I think she did well the other day to go with President Mattarella to Paris and she did well to meet with Trump and Musk.” Meloni “is putting Italy in a central position in the resolution” of international problems: “even with Zelensky she had a consistent behavior, she positioned Italy without ever giving in: I have the feeling that we are moving toward a solution of these two big conflicts, especially the one we have at the gates, and I think that the relationship with President-elect Trump that Meloni has can help at least to find a solution between Putin, the United States and then automatically Europe.”Looking at the national scenario, “certainly there is a big space” between “the premier and the leader of the Democratic Party who are on opposite ends of the spectrum: Forza Italia has a more moderate and more centrist position, certainly it has a space in which it can move. It has historically been Silvio Berlusconi’s party,” but “in the meantime a ruling class had grown up that today, together with Antonio Tajani, is trying to breathe new life into that party. It seemed impossible that it could survive its founder, instead the ruling class he left behind is showing maturity and great activism.” With Matteo Salvini’s League, on the other hand, “we are quite distinct,” the Carroccio “is increasingly rediscovering itself as a party that looks to the values that have characterized the historical right, while Forza Italia is the party that was born from Silvio Berlusconi’s liberal ideas. Even Maurizio Lupi’s Noi Moderati, which Mariastella Gelmini and Mara Carfagna have now joined, is nothing but a part of Silvio Berlusconi’s legacy. Forza Italia in recent times has rediscovered that liberal spirit, especially in the issue of rights, which had instead disappeared.” Precisely in the wake of these values, Polverini launched the association “United in Doing.” “I have recovered a project that had remained in the drawer” dedicated “to children from the suburbs who have a talent but do not have the chance to be discovered, because their parents do not have economically the opportunity to support them: they will have the chance to be evaluated and, if they really have a talent, we will offer them the opportunity to take a course at our expense.”-photo Italpress-(ITALPRESS).
