Since it’s at Palazzo Chigi, Giorgia Meloni has recorded and returned a number of official gifts ten times higher than the former Prime Minister’s Presidents
Those who passed to the newspapers the response to the question of Italy alive on the gifts received by Giorgia Meloni in his institutional meetings thought of putting the premier in difficulty. But the move is transforming itself into a sensational own goal, since it is emerging as in the past the return of the gifts was an not widespread practice. For example, on November 3, 2016, Matteo Renzi, then Prime Minister, stopped at Colnago, a temple of racing bicycles with headquarters in Cambiago, in the Milanese. He turns for the factory, holds hands, smiles at workers. Then comes the gift: a tailor -made citybike. Purple painting, Fiorentina tribute, the premier’s heart team. That bicycle does not appear in the list of goods received by the head of government during the exercise of their functions and preserved in the deposits of the ceremonial of Palazzo Chigi (obliged destination for the gifts of value greater than 300 euros). Perhaps because a year later it was Renzi himself who showed her proud on Twitter. He published the photo of the bike parked with a celestial shirt above the saddle. Complete with a caption: «Fantastic bike, historical jersey, but the climbs of Rignano looked like Mortirolo. Next (but today slowly). Happy Sunday”. So even a little advertising in Colnago.
Meloni and record gifts
But let’s get to the Autogol of the Renzians. Meloni, in just over two and a half years of government, filled the deposits of Palazzo Chigi as none before her. With 278 official gifts received and inventories in 925 days, it has a record average: a gift every 3.3 days. A frequency ten times higher than that of the premier who preceded it. From the Monti government to that Draghi, in 3,993 overall days of assignment, the first Italian ministers left just 129 gifts in the institutional archives, or one every 30.9 days. Mario Monti 19 in 528 days (with an average of a return every 27.8 days); Enrico Letta four in 300 days (its average is the worst, a return every 75 days); Renzi 15 in 1,023 (one return every 68.2 days, to a bed stamp); Paolo Gentiloni 12 in 535 (with an average of 44.6 days); Giuseppe Conte, despite the pandemic crisis, returned 59 in 987 days (16.7); Draghi, 20 in 617 (30.8). All together, they do not even reach half of Meloni’s “booty”.
The new practice of gifts
A disproportion that does not explain with diplomatic activism, nor with the changed geopolitical scenarios. It is explained only with the fact that with the current head of the government every gift received was treated for what it is: A state of the state, not a personal souvenir. Here the numbers speak. And they tell a story other than that narrated by the living room commentators. The rules have been there for almost 20 years. To write it was the government of Romano Prodi on 20 December 2007. A decree of the President of the Council put order to the gifts received by the ministers and their family members. They call them “representative gifts”. If more than 300 euros are valid, they cannot end in the house showcases: they must be delivered to the ceremonial of Palazzo Chigi. Remain owned by the state. But the real question is another: those cadeaux must be inventoriati, cataloged one by one. And it is precisely the inventory, that the truth was able to consult, to act as a litmus test: For years it has remained semi-life.
In recent days, the progressive media have discovered the well of San Patrizio of the gifts received by the premier in office. And they squared the list of gifts, from the pitonate to the scarves that Meloni received from the Albanese premier Edi Rama, letting imagine that those unsolicited gifts could represent personal utility. In reality those objects remained in Chigi and, as for their eccentricity, it is enough to take a look at the tributes of the past to understand that the type of gifts is more or less always of the same kind. These are precious, exotic jewelry, sometimes kitsch, but certainly symbolic. As confirmed by the first gift received from Monti. On February 9, 2012, during his visit to Washington, the leader Dem Nancy Pelosi, paid homage to him with the representation of the hypothesis of George Washington. The former premier also received watches, engravings, paintings, nibs with silver inkwell, commemorative coins, vases, glasses and even a Bulgarian women’s watch. In the list also an embroidered Arab costume and a fish fossil in a wooden box that directly delivered the Prime Minister of Lebanon Nagib Mikati.
