The Prime Minister’s hearing has begun Giorgia Meloni before the Honorary Jury of the Chamber, in the dispute raised by the leader of the M5s Giuseppe Conte for the Prime Minister’s accusations on the ESM. Meloni entered the room of the president’s library in Montecitorio, where the special investigative commission listened to Conte yesterday, in a session that lasted about an hour and a half.
The hearing with the internal judicial body of the Chamber was requested by Giuseppe Conte himself last December 13th following the accusations made by Meloni herself at the meeting after showing the fax, sent to the then representative Massari by Luigi Di Maio, in which he was authorized to sign the European Stability Mechanism: “The Conte government secretly gave its consent to the ESM“.
And this, he added, happened “the day after the resignation of the Conte government, when he was only in office for current affairs. I understand your difficulty and your embarrassment, but there is no way out of the story. This paper demonstrates the lack of seriousness of a government that before packing the boxes left this package to the next government”.
There reconstruction was therefore immediately denied by the former prime minister and also contested yesterday in the rooms of the Library of the President of Montecitorio, where the hearing lasted about an hour and a half in front of the Investigation Commission chaired by the Forzista Giorgio Mulé. For the occasion, the leader of the 5 Star Movement brought with him hundreds of pages of documents to dismantle the thesis supported by Meloni.
Giuseppe Conte: “I want justice”
“The activity of the Jury of Honor is classified, therefore the statements released remain secret on my part – Conte explained to journalists – But I asked for the activation of this Jury of Honor because I believe it is a parliamentary safeguard institute in extreme cases where there are false and mendacious statements that objectively offend the honor and reputation not only of me personally but also of my government with respect to all the transparent, timely discussion activity carried out with Parliament and therefore with all citizens. I obviously defer to the assessments that my fellow deputies will make, in whom I have full respect and full trust. I want justice“.
Conte should therefore have retraced the parliamentary process of the dossier on the bailout fund, showing that not having acted “under cover of darkness”. This is because as Prime Minister he passed the Chambers 14 times, including urgent communications and information, on the topic of the ESM and the process of strengthening the banking and monetary union. A number that rises between 30 and 40 if we also consider at government level the hearings in commission and in the Chamber carried out by the competent ministers, first Giovanni Tria and then Roberto Gualtieri. “And within all these passages, it is pointed out, the deputy Meloni was present in the Chamber”.
From left, the president of the M5s Giuseppe Conte and the prime minister Giorgia Meloni
The Honorary Jury: what it is and how it works
The instrument is established on the basis of article 58 of the Rules of Procedure, according to which “when during a debate a deputy is accused of facts which damage his honour, he can ask the President of the Chamber to appoint a commission which will judge the validity of the accusation; the commission may be given a deadline to present its conclusions to the Chamber, which takes note of them without debate or vote”.
Members of the Bureau who do not belong to the same groups as the deputies involved in the controversy, in this case Fdi and M5S, are usually called to join. With the particularity that this time one of the deputies called into question, Giorgia Meloni, is Prime Minister. In the past the commission was made up of three or five members and chaired by a vice-president of the Chamber.
The Jury is not expected to propose or impose sanctions, a prerogative which falls to the Bureau, but is called upon to carry out an investigation into the facts which are the subject of the dispute, hearing those directly involved and then to submit their conclusions to the House, which simply takes note of them.
This is the second time since the beginning of the legislature that the Honorary Jury has been established. The Montecitorio body in fact met between February and March of this year at the request of the PD deputies Silvio Lai, Andrea Orlando and Debora Serracchiani, after the accusations made against them in the Chamber by the coordinator of Fratelli d’Italia, Giovanni Donzelli, for the prison visit made together with the democratic senator Walter Verini and the anarchist Alfredo Cospito.