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Italy’s new far-right government, Giorgia Meloni, has won the first of two confidence votes needed by parliament by a sizeable margin.
In a vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, her coalition government voted 235 in favour and 154 against.
The coalition needs at least 195 votes to get a majority.
On Wednesday, the new government faces a vote in the upper house, the Senate, which also has a solid majority.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ms Meloni laid out her government’s policies, hitting back at critics at home and abroad who fear her far-right politics could undermine European unity or the civil rights of Italian citizens.
In a speech to the lower house of parliament, Ms Meloni criticised the EU for not always being up to the challenge, especially the energy crisis now threatening households and businesses.
But she pledged that her four-day coalition government, including right-wing and center-right allies, would remain loyal to EU agreements while working to change some of them, including currency stability.
“To ask these questions is not to be an enemy or a heretic, but a pragmatic person,” Ms Meloni said in a 70-minute speech ahead of a vote of confidence that all new governments will need.
Early in her speech, she bristled at critics, including foreign governments, who said they would be “alert” to focus on Italy’s first far-right government since the end of World War II.
That attitude amounted to “a lack of respect for the Italian people who don’t need a lesson,” Ms Meloni said.
The prime minister’s 10-year-old Italian fraternal party won 26 percent of the vote in last month’s Italian parliamentary elections.
Along with her main ally, the anti-immigration coalition leader Matteo Salvini and conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, Ms Meloni’s coalition could garner enough support in both houses of Italy’s parliament to Win a vote of confidence and govern.
Ms Meloni, 45, spoke of being the first woman to govern Italy, acknowledging that responsibility rests on “all those women who face a heavy and unjust burden in balancing family and work”.
She expressed her determination to “break the heavy glass ceiling over our heads”.
Ms Meloni recited the first names of women in Italy with great achievements, including a Communist politician who was the first woman to be elected president of the Chamber of Deputies, an astronaut and a Nobel-prize-winning scientist among others.
Ms Meloni, who said she won the top Italian government job without the help of “friends”, said: “I am what the British call a loser.”
Growing up, she mentioned a difficult family environment. Ms Meloni’s father left the family when she was very young.
In the debate following the prime minister’s speech, Opposition Leader Rep. Debora Serracchiani, a Democrat, challenged Ms Melloni to fight “inequality and poverty that require immediate intervention” , not the ideological propaganda when your government was born and is taking its first steps.”
The prime minister confirmed her campaign promise to support Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression. Berlusconi and Salvini have long admired Russian President Vladimir Putin and have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of the Western sanctions against Moscow.
Ms Meloni also sought to allay critics’ fears that her government would roll back Italy’s abortion rights law, saying her center-right government “will never limit the liberties of citizens”.
To boost Italy, which has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, towns should open free daycare centres and nurseries that remain open during business and store hours, she said.
“We need a massive economic and cultural program to rediscover the beauty of parenting and put the family back at the centre of society,” Ms Meloni said, condemning what she called “LGBT ideology”.
Meloni has been plagued by critics who say she does not explicitly condemn fascism. The Italian Brotherhood, which she co-founded in 2012, grew out of a far-right party founded by people nostalgic for 20th-century dictator Benito Mussolini.
“I have never felt sympathetic or close to any anti-democratic regime, including fascism,” Ms Meloni told the House. She denounced Mussolini’s racist 1938 law that persecuted Italy’s small Jewish community, calling it “the lowest point in Italian history.”
Ms Meloni has advocated for the government to tighten its grip on infrastructure companies, including highways, airports and telecommunications. She further pledged to make it easier for renewable energy projects such as wind farms to get approval from the authorities.
“The motto of this administration is, ‘Don’t bother people who want to do something,'” Meloni said. She said Italy needed “less bureaucracy and less rules”, which she said would help fight corruption.
According to EU rules, Italy’s total debt now stands at 150% of GDP and must be moved towards 60%. But Ms Meloni insisted that “the path to debt reduction is not the austerity of the past” but structured economic growth.
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