France 24
Mario Draghi obtains the confidence of the Senate and says he wants to “rebuild” Italy
The new head of the Italian government won the confidence of senators on Wednesday evening before claiming that of deputies on Thursday. In a speech to elected officials, he presented his program and promised to “rebuild” the country hit hard by the pandemic. The new head of the Italian government Mario Draghi won the Senate vote of confidence on Wednesday, February 17 on a reconstruction program for the country hit by the health and economic crisis, promising to “fight the pandemic by all means.” Mario Draghi obtained 262 votes in favor, 40 against and two abstentions, thus confirming the extent of its parliamentary majority. The Chamber of Deputies will vote on confidence on Thursday, the final step to confer full legitimacy on his government. By presenting his program in the morning, Mario Draghi called for “rebuilding” the country hit hard by the health and economic crisis, promising to “fight the pandemic by all means”. “Like the governments of the immediate post-war period, we have a responsibility to launch a New Reconstruction,” he said. “This is our mission as Italians: to leave a better and fairer country to our children and grandchildren,” he added. Distribution of vaccines Mario Draghi, a very discreet 73-year-old man educated at the Jesuits, succeeded on Saturday Giuseppe Conte, forced to resign after the explosion of his coalition, while Italy is approaching the mark of 100,000 deaths due to Covid and in 2020 recorded one of the worst falls in the GDP of the euro zone (- 8.9%). “The main duty to which we are all called (…) is to fight the pandemic by all means and to save the lives of our fellow citizens,” he said. he pointed out, while less than 1.3 million Italians out of a population of 60 million received the doses necessary for immunization. “After having obtained sufficient quantities of vaccines, our first challenge is to distribute them quickly and efficiently”, he said. The former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) also pleaded for a “European Union more integrated which will result in a common public budget capable of supporting Member States during periods of recession “, while proclaiming” the irreversibility of the choice of the euro. “” Without Italy, there is no no Europe, “said Mario Draghi, who heads a motley coalition going from the left to the far right of the sovereignist tribune Matteo Salvini. He also affirmed his desire to “strengthen” “strategic” relations with France and Germany. European recovery plan The third largest economy in the area, which lost 444,000 jobs in 2020, relies heavily on the windfall of the European recovery, the payment of which is linked to the presentation in Brussels by the end of April of a detailed expenditure plan, one of the missions of the new government. “We will have at our disposal around 210 billion euros on a period of six years. These resources will have to be spent to improve the growth potential of our economy “, underlined during his speech of three quarters of an hour Mario Draghi, who cited as priorities” renewable energies, the fight against air and water pollution, the high-speed train (…), the production and distribution of hydrogen, digitization and 5G “. During a second intervention in the evening, Mario Draghi pleaded for compulsory distribution of migrants between the various EU countries. “Italy, also supported by certain Mediterranean countries, is proposing as a concrete measure of solidarity a mechanism for the compulsory redistribution of migrants,” he said.
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