Italian prime minister Georgia Meloni has spoken out against the “political use of the EU Rule of Law Report,” after the European Commission alleged government interference in the running of the national media industries.
Italy’s country profile within the 2023 Rule of Law Report starts its media section by claiming:
Public service media play a major role in the media landscape while safeguards for their editorial and financial independence need to be strengthened.
In response, Meloni claims that the Commission’s findings contain:
clumsy and specious attacks that can only take hold in the bleak context of the recurrent use of fake news that increasingly pollutes the debate in Europe.
Readers of The European Conservative will be familiar with the way that ‘rule-of-law’ concerns are routinely used to harass sovereigntist European Union member states, primarily Hungary, Slovakia and—until recently—Poland, under its former Law and Justice (PiS) government. It now appears that Italian conservatives are waking up to this instrumentalist (and hypocritical) deployment of EU ‘lawfare’.
Unfortunately, it is not apparent right now that such recognition will offer much of a shield for the Italian government against further EU interference in its domestic affairs.
Meloni has promised to make every effort to ensure in Italy and in Europe “full respect for the founding values at the basis of the European Union and the assiduous commitment to make Italy progress in the field of free information, the fight against fake news and the pluralism of the public radio and television service after decades of brazen political allotment.”
In addition to stating her position, Meloni also sets out the facts of the case. Several journalists and anchormen leaving Rai (formerly Rai – Radiotelevisione italiana) were cited by the European Commission as evidence of government pressure on the public broadcaster in Italy to adopt changes to the editorial line.
In response, Meloni named names and explained these departures as part of the normal functioning of the job market. Likewise, she reminded Ursula von der Leyen that her own executive and parliamentary majority “have not yet made use of the current legislation for the renewal of top management”. The current Rai Board of Directors was appointed by the previous legislature, “by a majority of which Fratelli d’Italia was not a part.”
The Fratelli d’Italia members of the Rai Supervisory Commission commented on the prime minister’s letter to the European Commission by thanking Giorgia Meloni:
for having unmasked for the umpteenth time the game of the anti-Italian left, which with its lies has no qualms about damaging Italy abroad in order to hit the Prime Minister.
