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BRUSSELS - 15 March 2019 2.00 h

Tajani’s EU role at risk after Mussolini remarks

- BRUSSELS

Mak­ing light of fas­cism in Eu­ro­pean pol­i­tics clearly still comes at a se­ri­ous cost. An­to­nio Ta­jani, the Ital­ian cur­rently pre­sid­ing over the Eu­roCham­ber, was em­bar­rassed yes­ter­day by the re­ac­tions to his hav­ing said dic­ta­tor Ben­ito Mus­solini did “pos­i­tive things”. His head, strictly speak­ing, did not roll, but his image is in tat­ters, and he gen­er­ated some strong com­plaints and protests from left­ist, so­cial­ist and green Eu­ro­pean par­ties.

He was forced to apol­o­gise, but deputies from the Forza Italia party and the Par­tido Pop­u­lar de­fended him, ac­cus­ing “some peo­ple” of twist­ing the mean­ing of his words, which fea­tured in a radio in­ter­view with Italia Radio 24, on Wednes­day evening. Ta­jani said that “be­fore de­clar­ing war and fol­low­ing Hitler in ap­ply­ing racial laws, Mus­solini did some pos­i­tive things”. Among these pos­i­tive ac­tions, Ta­jani in­cluded Mus­solini’s “build­ing of in­fra­struc­ture” and “claim­ing of ter­ri­tory for Italy”.

He went on to say “I have never been a fas­cist, but to be hon­est, I have to admit Mus­solini built roads, bridges, build­ings, sports cen­tres, and claimed much ter­ri­tory for Italy”.

The Greens and the United Left de­manded his res­ig­na­tion, and the So­cial­ists wanted “im­me­di­ate ex­pla­na­tions” and didn’t rule out tak­ing“fur­ther ac­tion”.

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