ROME (ITALPRESS) – “It is good that Europe has given itself a government,” but now two urgent issues such as “defense and trade policies must be addressed.” This was said by Letizia Moratti, a member of the European Parliament and president of the National Council of Forza Italia, interviewed by Claudio Brachino for the Primo Piano” column of the Italpress news agency. “On defense it is very important to really start a path that leads us to a common defense, putting forces together. Surely we could also rationalize current spending and investments,” he stressed. “I’m in favor of common defense, which means first of all pooling expertise, but also doing joint ventures: 80 percent of defense procurement we do outside Europe, just doing joint procurement in Europe would bring a huge benefit. On the military, the position in Europe is a bit more difficult because there are neutral countries, it will take longer,” however, “it’s an absolute necessity, also because Trump will almost certainly decrease support for NATO with the wars on Europe’s doorstep: having a strong defense system is important.”On trade policies, “Trump has said that he intends to review them, so it will be very important that Europe shows up united at the negotiations,” but “beyond the tariffs that will be there, the important thing is that we recover competitiveness, so fewer rules that allow an acceptable energy transition and a Green Deal that is less ideological and more pragmatic.” For Moratti, “the Green Deal must be maintained in its objectives, but it must be revised in its timing. The goal of the People’s Party, to which Forza Italia adheres, is to have technological neutrality, so not only electric, but also a series of other sources that are decidedly less polluting,” such as “for example, fuels that are obtained from waste, where we Italians are leaders.” For Moratti, “energy efficiency needs to be supported because it cannot be borne by families, and since there are no European funds at the moment, we need to make sure that even this transition does not fall on families in those countries where budget constraints prevent or do not help to be able to do it.” Europe is experiencing “a very critical period for businesses,” especially “in the automotive sector: Volkswagen is closing in Germany and producing 6 million electric vehicles in China, Audi is closing in Belgium… what Europe needs to do in the automotive sector is to review the decision to have the end of the endothermic engine in 2035.” We need to “initiate a transition that supports the goals, but has timeframes that allow companies to invest because the transformation is expensive.” Even if we look at the sector of energy-intensive industries, “ceramics is invaded by Indian ceramics, in steel there is a global overproduction of 500 million tons but Europe is losing 6 percent: there is a problem of Europe’s competitiveness” that “needs to be addressed through innovation, research, more focused investments, less stringent rules and bureaucratic simplification.”Looking at Italy, among the hot topics is certainly the maneuver that Vindudubbiamente goes to the weakest groups,” but “it is fundamental to find resources that go to help the middle class that is the one that produces, that creates work from resources and that also gives resources in terms of contributions to the state through taxes. Without the middle class we have no growth,” Moratti explained. “Forza Italia’s position concerns an issue of the country’s economic policy, it cannot be dismissed as ‘Forza Italia is asking for this instead of a decrease in the RAI fee,’ it’s something else, it’s an approach that we claim having businesses, growth and work at heart.” Among the proposals on which the party’s council is working, then, is one on health care: “We are committed to reviewing also normatively the organization of general practitioners, an issue that touches everyone but has never been resolved. We have a proposal: now we will decide how to formalize it.” More generally, for Forza Italia, “the theme is the centrality of the person and his or her freedoms, so choosing schooling for children, for a woman to choose whether to work and be a mother at the same time: this is precisely the backbone of Forza Italia’s values, I believe that in the current context this is emerging” and that “there is really a lot of space between Meloni and Schlein with respect to these policies.”
– Italpress Photo –
(ITALPRESS).
