After the surprise announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister for Transport, Matteo Salvini, the city’s mayor complained that he had not been consulted.
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Far-right League leader Matteo Salvini’s plan to name Milan airport after controversial former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has not met with unanimous approval. Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister also in charge of the Transport portfolio in the government of Giorgia Meloni, announced this surprise decision on Friday July 5 during a television broadcast. The mayor of Milan complained on Tuesday of not having been consulted.
While Milan’s Malpensa airport is one of the most important on the peninsula, the left-wing mayor of the Lombard metropolis, Giuseppe Sala, criticises Matteo Salvini for having taken this decision alone. “Why didn’t he discuss it with Sea (the company that manages Milan’s airports, where the municipality is represented)?”the elected official asked on Tuesday, quoted by the AGI agency. “Can a decision like this be made in 24 hours?”he was indignant.
Beyond the decision-making method, it is also the divisive personality of Silvio Berlusconi, who died in June 2023 at the age of 86, that is being debated. The billionaire, as famous for his political maneuvers as for his legal troubles, had built his fortune in Milan, chairing the AC Milan football club for 31 years.
The main opposition Democratic Party has launched a campaign to collect alternative names, arguing that “Berlusconi’s biography does not represent those who, like us, fight against the values that this period represented”A left-wing union, CGIL, has put online a petition to propose naming the airport after Carla Fracci (1936-2021), an Italian ballet legend born in Milan.
