Italy's President Slaps Elon Musk's Hand For Interfering With The Country's Internal Affairs

An Italian Navy ship approaching the port of Shengjin in northwestern Albania last week, with a group of eight migrants who were intercepted in international waters. They were to be processed there at a reception facility.Credit...Vlasov Sulaj/Associated Press

 

By Emma Bubola

Reporting from Rome

 

In an unusual move, Italy’s president sharply rebuked Elon Musk for weighing in on Italy’s immigration debate in a series of posts on Mr. Musk’s X platform.

In one of a flurry of posts, Mr. Musk wrote on Tuesday, “These judges need to go.” He was referring to the Roman judges who on Monday put on hold the government’s request to place a group of migrants in Albania as part of a new plan to outsource asylum requests to the Balkan country.

In a related post on Wednesday, Mr. Musk wrote: “This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”

On Wednesday, Mr. Musk’s posts prompted a sharp reaction by Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, who said in a statement that Italy “can take care of herself.” He added, “Anyone, especially if, as announced, they are about to assume an important government role in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot assume the task of imparting prescriptions.” 

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who since Donald J. Trump’s election as the U.S. president has also become America’s most powerful private citizen, has a history of weighing in on other country’s domestic matters, and has posted in favor of Italy’s anti-immigration policies. (On Tuesday, Mr. Trump named Mr. Musk to help lead a body “to dismantle government bureaucracy.”)

A bespectacled gray-haired man with a stern expression and wearing a pin-stripped suit walks with slightly hunched shoulders in front of a group.

President Sergio Mattarella is Italy’s head of state but not part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government. Credit...Yara Nardi/Reuters

The statement on Wednesday was an unusual intervention by Mr. Mattarella, who is Italy’s head of state but not part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government. Among his duties, he presides over the high council of the judiciary, the branch’s self-governing body that ensures the magistrates’ autonomy and independence.

 

Critics of Ms. Meloni’s government praised Mr. Mattarella’s reaction and attacked Ms. Meloni, who considers herself a friend of Mr. Musk, for failing to condemn the entrepreneur’s intrusion despite having built her political identity around the protection of Italy’s sovereignty.

Ms. Meloni’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but Giovanbattista Fazzolari, a government under secretary, said that Ms. Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, “has always been attentive to the issue, rejecting any attempt of foreign interference in our internal affairs.”

(The New York Times)