Right-wing leader in Italy slams Europe on energy policy
MILAN (AP) — Italian right-wing leader Matteo Salvini on Friday criticized Germany and other European Union nations for not working together on a common response to the energy crisis but instead “protecting their own interests.”
“The European Union in these days, in these weeks, has been very much everyone for himself. The Spaniards protected their own interests, the French protected their own interests,’’ Salvini said at a Milan demonstration by farmers protesting the impact of high energy prices.
He was especially bitter about the 200 billion-euro ($195 billion) package for industry and consumers Germany announced this week “Germany, from which we expected a response, did not wait for a European intervention. It put up 200 billion euros cash,’’ Salvini said.
Italy has spent some 60 billion euros since last year to ease the pain of higher energy prices for households and industry. But the Coldiretti agriculture lobby behind Friday’s protest said aid to farmers has been mostly in the form of tax credits and not help with electricity bills, which have gone up 500% since last year, or fertilizer costs, up 170%.
The outgoing government of Premier Mario Draghi has refused to borrow more money for a deeper aid package, citing Italy’s high debt level. Italy instead has pressed for a European price cap on Russian natural gas, leveraging on the bloc’s collective market power, but so far has been unable to persuade the rest of the EU to go along.
Germany is worried that Russia would cut off gas, crippling its industry, and France has set its own national price cap.
Salvini’s League is part of the right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy and also including Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia that is expected to form Italy’s next government in the...
