(By Laura Clarke).
No one person is in charge of
Italy, President Sergio Mattarella said in a wide-ranging speech
on Thursday that also touched on unemployment, corruption,
immigration and reform.
"No one is alone at the command of our country, least of
all the president," said Mattarella at the traditional
so-called 'fan ceremony' ahead of parliament's summer recess.
Premier Matteo Renzi has been accused by some critics of
trying to govern the country single-handedly since ousting his
Democratic Party (PD) colleague Enrico Letta from the head of a
national unity government in February 2014.
Italy's Constitution provides a "happy balance and mutual
control" among the various government powers, Mattarella said.
"This equilibrium exists and will remain in the
Constitution and is a guarantee that oversees the authentic
character of our democracy," he continued.
However, reform of Italy's costly and slow-moving
political machinery remained a "crux issue" facing the current
parliament, the president said.
"I hope that the path of reforms is completed after
decades of unsuccessful attempts," Mattarella commented.
"I don't go into the merits of the options, which is
parliament's domain," he continued.
"Every president of the republic has his own ideas, I also
have mine, but I have the duty to put them to one side because
if decisions are taken by Constitutional bodies I must respect
them and I will always respect them," he explained.
Mattarella also listed the fight against corruption and
the mafia as an "absolute priority" facing the country.
"It is a cultural commitment involving the whole of
society," he added.
The president also had words of support for young people
facing unemployment and for the country's poorer southern
regions.
"We cannot abandon an entire generation of young people,
we cannot abandon the South," said Mattarella, himself from
Italy's southern island region of Sicily.
"Employment for all is a principle of our Constitution," he
said, adding that early signs of economic recovery needed to be
"developed, encouraged and put to the shrewdest possible use".
Mattarella then identified terrorism as the main threat
facing Italy and other Allies in the coming years, stressing
that the battle is a cultural as well as a security one.
"On the cultural level we must offer a more convincing
proposal of co-existence for those in difficulty," he said.
As well, Mattarella said the European Union had taken an
"important step" in addressing the migrant crisis in the
Mediterranean, but that this needed to be followed by other
"significant and important steps" if it is to be effective.
"Some countries have been more generous than others,"
Mattarella said of the recent voluntary agreement to relocate
asylum-seekers from Greece and Italy - the main countries of
arrival - to other EU states.
"Sweden, Finland, Romania have accepted the full quotas
envisaged by the EU. Ireland, though excluded, spontaneously
offered to take a good number of refugees. But it is the (EU)
founder nations that have agreed to take two-thirds: this shows
they play an important role," the president continued.
"Europe needs to look at itself closely" with respect to
the current migrant crisis, seeing as "it does not do what it
should, namely what its history and civilisation require,"
Mattarella insisted.
Nonetheless, he repeated that the relocation agreement
represented an important step because "for the first time the EU
has formally acknowledged that it is a problem concerning the
whole of Europe".
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