Senators clash over Ventotene Manifesto

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 20 - Members of the centre-right ruling coalition and the centre-left opposition clashed in the Senate on Thursday, a day after Premier Giorgia Meloni's statement that the Manifesto of Ventotene did not represent the Europe she envisions sparked a political controversy.
    The first to intervene at the beginning of the session was Senator Raffaella Paita of the centrist Italia Viva (IV) party in the opposition who said she wanted to "stigmatize the words" used by the premier in her speech at the Lower House, in which she questioned the 1941 manifesto which was circulated within the Italian Resistance and soon became the programme of the European Federalist Movement.
    "What happened yesterday is grave for democracy and Europe, I consider taking sentences of the manifesto written by exiled heroes out of context to be shameful", said Paita amid the protest of rightist Senators.
    "What happened yesterday dishonours the country and does not give justice to Europe and the anti-Fascist Resitance", she said.
    Tino Magni from the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) and Sario Parrini, of the largest member of the opposition, the Democratic Left, also criticized the statement amid the protest of centre-right Senators.
    On Wednesday, Meloni's statement during a Lower House debate ahead of this week's EU Council sparked a protest by opposition members that led Speaker Lorenzo Fontana to temporarily interrupt the session.
    "I don't know if this is your Europe, but it's certainly not mine", Meloni said.
    "I hope they haven't read it, because the alternative would be scary", she also noted.
    The small island of Ventotene off the coast of Lazio housed a Fascist prison during World War II, and three of the founding fathers of the European Union were held there by the Mussolini dictatorship.
    This was where Spinelli Rossi and Colorni came up with the Ventotene Manifesto.
    The Manifesto encouraged a federation of European states in a bid to prevent future wars.
    Later on Wednesday, Meloni posted her address to the House in which she spoke about the Manifesto to her social media channels writing: "You judge".
    Meloni's three-minute-long speech on the Manifesto quoted experts from the 1941 text, which was written during the Fascist regime, saying that "the European revolution in order to respond to our needs must be Socialist" and "in revolutionary eras in which institutions don't need to be administered but created, the democratic practice sensationally fails", among others.
    (ANSA).