Giorgia Meloni accuses Stellantis of favoring French interests – Technologist

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to see more vehicles produced in Italy and more influence exerted on the Stellantis automotive group. This conglomerate emerged from the 2021 merger between Fiat Chrysler, Italy’s legacy car manufacturer, and France’s PSA group. As the campaign for the European elections in June gets underway, the head of government has accused the multinational of being subservient to French interests and sacrificing Italian production and jobs.

John Elkann, president of Stellantis, is the primary target, along with the Agnelli family, the most successful dynasty within the Italian industrial aristocracy. Elkann is the heir of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat. Through its Exor holding company, the Agnelli family is the main shareholder in Stellantis, owning 14.3% of its shares.

Addressing Italian lawmakers on Wednesday, January 24, Meloni referred to the Fiat group as “an important part of the national industrial history (…), which means [that we should] also have the courage to criticize management choices, such as the transfer of the tax headquarters abroad or the so-called merger with the French group PSA, which in reality hid an acquisition by the French part of the historic Italian group.”

‘Made in Italy’

Through the French Public Investment Bank, France holds 6.1% of Stellantis assets, which is domiciled in the Netherlands. Yet the theme of French predation on national industrial groups is a recurrent one in Italian political discourse. “Today, a representative of the French government sits on Stellantis. It’s no coincidence that the group’s industrial choices take greater account of French demands,” accused Meloni.

Two days before her speech, the feud with Elkann escalated to a new level. Invited to appear on the Retequattro channel on Monday, January 22, the prime minister reacted harshly to the previous day’s front page in La Repubblica, which criticized the idea of Italy being “for sale,” attacking the €20 billion of privatizations announced by the Italian government in fall 2023.

At the time, Meloni said she wouldn’t take a “lesson in protecting Italianness” from “a newspaper belonging to those who took Fiat and sold it to the French, who transferred their legal and tax headquarters abroad and who put historic Italian companies up for sale.” Like La Stampa, the Rome daily belongs to Elkann’s empire, through the GEDI group.

Meloni promoted “Made in Italy” as a major political theme, so much so that she decided to rename the economic development ministry using the expression. She is no stranger to saying that, before she came to power in October 2022, Italy had fallen victim to a reluctance to defend its own interests, giving way to those of foreign powers.

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