Italy: Milan mayor wins EU support for anti-Meloni campaign

Milan: The mayors of Milan, Rome, Naples and Turin are accusing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of discrimination by denying same-sex parents recognition as legal guardians.

Milan’s center-left mayor Giuseppe Sala is now facing off with the Italian government over the issue.

Italy’s new prime minister is turning the country into a version of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Sala told POLITICO.

“It is clear that the government is looking to those kind of countries,” said the mayor of Italy’s second biggest city, referring to Poland and Hungary.

In Italy, a lack of specific legislation over the past two years allowed mayors and municipal officials the power to grant legal guardianship for same-sex parents — but the Meloni government cut off that option earlier this year, threatening legal action against anyone who carries the practice forward.

Since taking office in October, Italy’s right-wing government has seized on divisive issues like LGBTQ+ rights and migration. Meloni is stoking a culture war to win votes, critics say.

Sala accused Meloni of taking the country back in time, also referring to a recent move that could limit the right to gather to protest.

Sala traveled to Brussels on Wednesday to garner support among European parliamentarians — including the Greens’ co-president Terry Reintke, who successfully placed a debate on the situation of so-called rainbow families in Italy on the European Parliament’s agenda for that same day.

At a press conference with Sala, Reintke said she “absolutely” believed that making Italy like Orbán’s Hungary was “the fear that stands behind a lot of the developments that we are seeing [in Italy].”

As a founding EU country and larger member country than Hungary and Poland, Reintke added about Italy: “The detrimental force that it would have to the European Union as a whole if we would see further developments in this direction in Italy would be of a completely different magnitude.”

On Thursday, Sala met the EU’s Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli, who backed his position.

“All children have the same rights without discrimination & are entitled to a continuity of their parenthood in cross-border situations within the Union,” she wrote on Twitter.

The mayor of Milan called on EU officials and institutions to speak out against Italy’s clampdown — but did not go so far as to suggest that Brussels should treat Italy like Hungary and Poland by threatening to withhold EU funds.

Both eastern countries have sought to curtail LGTBQ+ rights, with Poland going as far as to create “LGBT ideology-free zones,” and Hungary most recently banning the portrayal of homosexuality in content for minors.

Italian Socialist MEP Brando Benifei said at the press conference: “The Meloni government seems to be taking a more Orbán-esque line. It’s engaging in ideological propaganda which is targeting children.”