Speeches

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as a member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, I would like to share with you today the pleasure and pride of speaking - as an Italian - on a subject such as employment policies and of being able to present to you the results achieved by Italy over the last two years. Today we are calling on the European Union to promote employment. In Italy, the number of jobs has increased by 834,000 in the last two years and the number of people employed has reached a record 24 million. We call on the European Union to promote STEM education in order to promote the integration of young people into the labour market. Well, in Italy in the last two years we have invested 950 million in STEM education and 545 million to combat early school leaving. Colleagues, today Giorgia Meloni's Italy can look you in the eye with its head held high and offer all of you a way to counter unemployment and promote the relaunch of the labour market.

(IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, today the European Union is suffering a real attack by certain foreign nations on non-compliant, very low-quality products, often even dangerous for the final consumer. An attack that exploits two flaws in our defense system: the first, the possibility for certain online platforms to easily circumvent the rules; and secondly, the fact that Europe has in recent years enacted a series of self-defeating regulations, which often seemed to favour those outside Europe rather than our businesses. It is essential for the European Union today to step up border controls, protect consumers and combat unfair competition. We need to improve cooperation, empower online platforms. Cooperation and accountability: These are the recipes for a stronger Europe that fights illegal trade.

Mr Ceccardi, you spoke today legitimately of the defence of borders and I wanted to ask you about immigration. I wanted to ask you how you combine this position with what the Tuscany Region has decided instead, the region from which you and I come, with the choice to refuse to build a residence center in the Tuscany Region, continuing to say that the model of widespread reception, the one that brought four Tuscan cities to the top four places in the ranking of the ten cities with the most complaints in Italy, is the only way to face immigration.