Meloni and state aid: the story of a patriotic defeat

First the barricades, then the decision to give in, but firmly. The result is that in one year of the green light on subsidies to companies, Germany spends 300 billion more than Italy. Which, however, gets 5 billion more for the Pnrr. Nice deal

It must have been the Piave line: “The foreigner does not pass”. It will end as in Versailles, with a mutilated victory passed off as dignified. In short, Giorgia Meloni gives in firmly, given that dissimulation, more or less honest, is the only path that seems viable, on the eve of a European Council from which Italy emerges greatly reduced in its claims to affect the decisive economic dossiers. The legislation on state aids will essentially pass as the Commission, therefore Germany, had conceived it. When Ursula von der Leyen, last January 10, had come to Rome to illustrate it to the premier, from Palazzo Chigi they had wanted to put in the minutes: “This is not good, we will end up rewarding those who have more fiscal space”. That is Berlin, in fact. And this is precisely the turn events take. So Meloni is forced to claim the concession of flexibility on the Pnrr. You know what a deal.