While Prime Minister Meloni is being tame in Brussels, the Minister of Education is causing criticism – he said that young people should be humiliated for “personality development”.

Internationally, Italy’s center-right government is trying to adopt a moderate tone. After all, the country needs the EU, and above all the EU funds: At the end of the year, Italy is to receive a further 20 billion euros from the reconstruction fund, provided that it achieves the 55 goals linked to it.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to discuss these conditions again, at the same time it is hoped that Brussels will push through the price cap for gas. There is also disagreement with Brussels when it comes to asylum policy – ​​the EU sharply criticized the fact that sea rescue ships from aid organizations were not allowed to dock. There is also no consensus on Hungary: the EU wants to withhold several billion from Budapest because of deficiencies in the rule of law – Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega are against it, but Berlusconi’s Forza Italia are in favor.

“Long live humiliation”

The domestic rhetoric of the new government is different. “The humiliation (note: of a young person) is an important growth factor and contributes to the formation of personality,” it says, for example – and the claim does not come from just anyone, but from Lega politician Giuseppe Valditara, Minister for Education and Merit ( the latter designation was added by the new centre-right government). In the case of grossly culpable behavior, such as bullying, “the community service and the humiliation, long live humiliation, result in the student taking responsibility for his actions before his classmates,” he said publicly.

The Minister of Education is not the only politician in the government who wants to ensure law and order. A few days ago Lucio Malan, Fratelli d’Italia parliamentary group leader in the Senate, said in a radio interview: “The Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination. This is in both the Old and New Testaments.”

Both later tried to row back. Education Minister Valditara explained that he had made a slip, he meant humility and not humiliation (two terms that sound similar in Italian too). If you listen closely to the everyday rhetoric of the Lega and Fratelli politicians, many observers may have doubts.

prices explode

At the moment, the Italians have completely different concerns anyway. For example, how to pay the quadrupled gas and electricity bills. This also explains why the government continues to have a very high popularity rating – 42 percent – in polls after 30 days in office.

Ordinary people are more likely to notice that the cabinet intends to use two-thirds of the additional spending budgeted for curbing energy prices. The fact that this money only lasts until March is still being ignored by the citizens.