Italy’s former Europe minister has likened to 1930s fascists the politician who attacked him for taking a French government job, and described as “grotesque” a threat to withdraw his Italian citizenship.
“It’s something you would expect from the 1920s or 1930s,” Sandro Gozi told the Financial Times after Luigi Di Maio, Italian deputy prime minister, accused him of betrayal because he took a job as Europe adviser in the office of French premier Edouard Philippe. “It’s grotesque.”
Mr Gozi, an outspoken pro-European, championed the idea of “transnational” party lists for this year’s EU election, and was one of six non-French candidates for election to the European Parliament on the 79-strong list of French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renaissance party.
He will take a seat as MEP if the UK withdraws from the EU as expected on October 31 and leaves the British seats vacant for redistribution to other countries.
For the time being, Mr Gozi is advising the French government on how to handle the European Parliament agenda and on a planned “Conference on the Future of Europe” designed to elicit citizens’ input into the running of the EU.
The nationalist and populist leaders of Italy’s coalition government have clashed repeatedly with Mr Macron and members of his pro-European administration, particularly over the EU’s handling of the migrants who cross the Mediterranean from north Africa and often make landfall on Italian soil.
Mr Gozi said there were two main enemies confronting pro-Europeans such as himself: first, the nationalist politicians who hold sway in several EU member states; and second “the status quo” — the tendency of European leaders to delay big reforms and important projects in favour of handling immediate crises.