She could well become the new face of power in Italy. The nationalist Giorgia Meloni signs with her party, Fratelli d’Italia, the best score in the legislative elections, Sunday September 25. With more than 26% of the votes cast, the far-right party weighs heavily in the leading coalition (about 43% of the votes according to the latest counts), with a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. A score that allows the leader to see herself already President of the Council (the equivalent of Prime Minister in Italy).
>> Read also: Who is Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader who already sees herself “guiding the government”?
Social model, abortion, economy… While Giorgia Meloni has confirmed her intention to lead the government to come, franceinfo returns to the highlights of her program and her projects for Italy.
A resolutely pronatalist policy…
This is the very first theme addressed in the program of Fratelli d’Italia: the “birth and family support”. Since her militant beginnings in the 1990s, Giorgia Meloni has defended a traditional family model geared towards procreation. It thus intends to establish the family quotient to reduce taxes for each new child, increase family allowances, facilitate access to crèches or even extend parental leave.
However, these social measures are accompanied by stricter supervision of access to abortion. Giorgia Meloni sees abortion as a “defeat” and aims, in its programme, to “prevention” of abortion and the presentation of other “options”. For example, it seeks to protect the conscientious objection of doctors, which allows them to refuse such an act. “I don’t want to change the law [sur l’avortement], I want to add rights to it”defended Giorgia Meloni in the Italian press, notably by offering financial aid to poor women wishing to have an abortion, if this can prevent them from ending their pregnancy.
…against immigration and the supposed “LGBT lobby”
The increase in the birth rate in Italy represents, for Fratelli d’Italia, a way of maintaining “Italian demography”. Understand: limit the share of children of immigrant origin in the total population. “I am not saying that foreigners should not have children, but we must create the conditions for Italians to reproduce”declared in January 2021 Carlo Ciccioli, a party executive, who created controversy by speaking of “ethnic substitution” – an idea close to the racist and conspiratorial theory of the “great replacement”.
A fierce opponent of jus soli, Giorgia Meloni calls in her program to stop the flow of irregular immigration. She has also repeatedly demanded that Italian ports refuse boats that have rescued migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. To complete her demographic project, the leader of the extreme right calls on page 32 of her program to “to encourage the return of Italians abroad”.
Giorgia Meloni’s commitment to the birth rate goes hand in hand with her homophobic positions. The 45-year-old Roman is openly opposed to the marriage of homosexual couples (only civil unions are authorized in Italy) as well as the adoption of children by same-sex couples. “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby! Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology!” she had chanted during a meeting in Spain (article in Spanish reserved for subscribers) last June. Before unrolling one of his favorite slogans: “God, fatherland, family”.
A sovereignist economic plan
On the economic side, the program of the coalition of which Giorgia Meloni is a member remains very vague, which has earned him the title of populist. It is campaigning for tax reductions at all levels (businesses, households) but at the same time wants the Italian state to invest more in national industry and in protectionism. Its marker, however, remains the national preference and the “Made in Italy” (in English in its program).
Giorgia Meloni also wants to redirect the Italian recovery plan (PNRR) voted by the European Commission in 2021 to support the economies weakened by the Covid-19 crisis. For her, this thick envelope (191 billion euros) must be used primarily to build infrastructure, to open up certain regions, but also to limit the inflation caused by the war in Ukraine.
She repeated it during her last meetings, Giorgia Meloni is no longer campaigning for an “Italexit” (an exit from the European Union), but is demanding “a confederal Europe” and less regulatory. A Europe which should, still according to her, grant more respite to Italy concerning its abysmal debt (the second highest in the euro zone, after that of Greece).