Italy’s government has granted citizenship to Argentine President Javier Milei on account of his Italian family roots, a source with knowledge of the matter said on Friday, confirming earlier media reports.
Milei was in Rome to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and to take part in her Brothers of Italy party’s annual festival yesterday.
The source said the government had given Italian citizenship to the Argentine leader, declining to provide further details.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The news on Italian media triggered an angry reaction from some politicians and on social media from people protesting citizenship being given to Milei when it is hard to obtain for the children of migrants born in Italy.
Italy’s citizenship laws are based on blood ties, meaning that even distant descendants of an Italian national can obtain an Italian passport.
Requirements for foreigners born in Italy or who migrate there, on the other hand, are much tougher. Pro-migrant groups have proposed a referendum to ease them, but Meloni’s right-wing coalition is against any relaxation.
Riccardo Magi, a lawmaker from the small opposition More Europe party, said granting citizenship to Milei was an act of “intolerable discrimination against so many young people who will only get it after many years.”
During a previous trip to Italy in February, Milei told a TV interview he felt “75 percent Italian” since three of his grandparents had Italian origins, and that he has “an incredible passion for Italian opera.”
Libertarian Milei and conservative Meloni have established a close relationship.
When they met in Buenos Aires last month, the Argentine leader gave his Italian guest a statuette of himself wielding his trademark chainsaw.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS