Italy’s PM takes aim at EU migrant policy, Russia sanctions in maiden speech

5 June 2018: The leader of Italy's new “anti-system” government vowed Tuesday to challenge austerity, redistribute migrants in the EU and review the bloc's sanctions against Russia, in his first policy speech to lawmakers since being sworn in.

Giuseppe Conte addressed the Senate ahead of two parliamentary confidence votes expected to confirm his new cabinet, formed from a coalition of hard-right and anti-establishment parties.

His eurosceptic government, which has embraced the “populist” label, was sworn in on Friday after almost three months of political turmoil that alarmed EU officials and spooked financial markets.

A lawyer with little political and no government experience, Conte was nominated by anti-immigrant League leader Matteo Salvini and the head of the anti-establishment Five Star movement Luigi di Maio – both of whom are now his deputy prime ministers.

Conte's maiden policy speech reaffirmed several of the coalition's key manifesto themes, including a tough line on migrants, rejection of economic austerity and conciliatory gestures towards Moscow.

Italy’s PM takes aim at EU migrant policy, Russia sanctions in maiden speech

The leader of Italy's new “anti-system” government vowed Tuesday to challenge austerity, redistribute migrants in the EU and review the bloc's sanctions against Russia, in his first policy speech to lawmakers since being sworn in.
Giuseppe Conte addressed the Senate ahead of two parliamentary confidence votes expected to confirm his new cabinet, formed from a coalition of hard-right and anti-establishment parties.

His eurosceptic government, which has embraced the “populist” label, was sworn in on Friday after almost three months of political turmoil that alarmed EU officials and spooked financial markets.

A lawyer with little political and no government experience, Conte was nominated by anti-immigrant League leader Matteo Salvini and the head of the anti-establishment Five Star movement Luigi di Maio – both of whom are now his deputy prime ministers.

Conte's maiden policy speech reaffirmed several of the coalition's key manifesto themes, including a tough line on migrants, rejection of economic austerity and conciliatory gestures towards Moscow.

'WE WILL SUPPORT A DIALOGUE WITH RUSSIA'

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"We want to reduce our public debt, but we want to do so with growth and not with austerity measures," he told senators.

"We will strongly call for the Dublin Regulation to be overhauled in order to obtain respect for a fair distribution of responsibilities and to achieve an automatic system of compulsory distribution of asylum seekers."

On Russia, which faces EU sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, Conte said: "We will promote a review of the sanctions system."

A puppet PM?

Both former premier Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party – a campaign ally of the League – and the outgoing centre-left Democratic Party have said they will not vote in favour of the new government.

But the alliance between Five-Star and the League is expected to pass the confidence votes in the Senate on Tuesday and in the lower Chamber of Deputies on Wednesday as the two parties hold a majority in both houses.

On the 53-year-old prime minister's agenda in his first weeks in office are a Group of Seven summit in Canada this week and a key EU summit at the end of the month.

Conte's low profile has fuelled speculation that he will take a back seat to his two powerful deputies. Salvini is to be interior minister in the new cabinet and Di Maio will hold the economic development portfolio.

Since being sworn in, Conte had limited himself to a Facebook post in which he said that he had spoken with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, and would meet the two leaders at the G7 summit.

'Good times over' for illegal migrants

On Monday, Di Maio, whose party has promised a basic income for Italy’s poorest households, met representatives of food deliverers in Italy's gig economy.

Afterwards Di Maio described the workers as "the symbol of an abandoned generation," and underlined the need to give them "job security and a dignified minimum wage".

Meanwhile, Salvini has wasted no time addressing immigration, his party’s main vote-winner.

Visiting Sicily, where thousands of migrants have arrived in recent years, he declared at the weekend that Italy "cannot be Europe's refugee camp".

The 45-year-old has repeatedly promised to cut arrivals and accelerate expulsions from a country where around 700,000 migrants have arrived since 2013.

"The good times for illegals are over – get ready to pack your bags," he said Saturday.

European Union interior ministers are meeting on Tuesday to discuss possible reforms of the bloc's controversial Dublin Regulation, whereby refugees must file for asylum in the first member state they enter.

Salvini has blasted the regulation as unfairly burdening Mediterranean countries and leading to "an obvious imbalance in management, numbers and costs".