The Prime Minister used her annual speech to Confindustria to renew her assault on Brussels’ regulatory culture, calling it a bureaucratic behemoth, and pledge domestic reform.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni delivered a pointed attack on the European Union on Tuesday, telling the annual assembly of Confindustria — Italy’s main employers’ federation — that the bloc’s bureaucratic structure and ideological approach are actively damaging European competitiveness and strategic credibility.
“The enormous, main weakness that affects us directly is the current structure of the European Union,” Meloni told the gathering. She described the EU as “a bureaucratic behemoth that has all too often sacrificed competitiveness and strategic growth on the altar of ideological and technocratic approaches.”
The Prime Minister has made this line of attack a recurring feature of her European policy, particularly targeting the Green Deal and related regulations, which she argues are counterproductive and economically damaging. On Tuesday she extended the critique to the EU’s global standing. “Europe has been relentless in its ability to multiply rules to every aspect of daily life but short-sighted when it came to making its voice heard on the global stage.”
Meloni also turned the argument inward, proposing that the same principles be applied at home. She announced plans to launch a joint project with Confindustria to reform Italy’s domestic bureaucracy — framing deregulation not merely as an economic priority but as a matter of democratic principle and national competitiveness.
The Confindustria address is traditionally one of the most closely watched moments in Italy’s political-economic calendar. It offers the government an opportunity to set out its industrial priorities before the country’s leading business representatives. Meloni’s remarks are likely to add fresh impetus to her government’s ongoing pressure on Brussels to scale back environmental regulation ahead of negotiations over the EU’s next legislative cycle.
