The President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni, wants more vehicles produced in the peninsula and more influence on the Stellantis automobile group, resulting from the merger, in 2021, of Fiat Chrysler, the heir of the national manufacturer, with the group French PSA. At the start of the campaign for the European elections in June, the head of the executive criticizes the multinational for being submissive to French interests and sacrificing Italian production and jobs.
John Elkann, president of Stellantis, is primarily targeted and with him the Agnelli family, the most brilliant dynasty of the Italian industrial aristocracy, whose patriarch, Giovanni, was the founder of Fiat and of which Mr. Elkann is the heir . Through its holding company Exor, it is the main shareholder of Stellantis, owning 14.3% of its shares.
Speaking of “Fiat group”Ms. Meloni declared, before the Chamber of Deputies, Wednesday January 24, that the company represented “an important part of the national industrial history (…)which means [qu’il fallait] also have the courage to criticize management choices, such as the transfer of the tax headquarters abroad or the supposed merger with the French group PSA, which in reality hid an acquisition by the French part of the historic Italian group.
THE “ Made in Italy”, a major political theme
Through the Public Investment Bank, France holds 6.1% of the assets of Stellantis, which is domiciled in the Netherlands. However, the theme of French predation on national industrial groups is recurrent in Italian political discourse. “Today, in Stellantis, there is a representative of the French government. It is no coincidence that the group’s industrial choices take more into account French demands.”, thus accused Ms. Meloni.
Two days before his intervention, the quarrel with Mr. Elkann had manifested itself on another level. Invited to a program on the Retequattro channel on Monday January 22, the President of the Council reacted harshly to the headlines the day before La Repubblica. The latter denounced a “Italy for sale”by attacking the privatizations of 20 billion euros announced in the fall of 2023 by the Italian government.
Giorgia Meloni then declared that she had no “lesson in protecting Italianness” to receive from “ a newspaper belonging to those who took Fiat and sold it to the French, who transferred their legal and fiscal headquarters abroad and who put the sites up for sale [des] historic Italian companies”. As La Stampathe Rome daily in fact belongs, through the GEDI group, to Mr. Elkann’s empire.
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