Italian opposition unites against naming airport after Berlusconi

Opposition parties in Italy are up in arms over the decision to rename one of the country’s most famous airports, Milan Malpensa, after late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The airport’s new official name will be “Milano Malpensa International Airport – Silvio Berlusconi”, the Infrastructure and Transport, headed by Matteo Salvini, announced last Thursday.

The announcement was made with “great satisfaction”, said Salvini, as the name change was immediately decreed by the Italian Civil Aviation Authority.

But while memes flooded the internet and opposition parties threatened action the day after the announcement, on Monday, citizens, the Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement, the Green and Left Alliance and many other organisations held a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Lombardy regional government.

The left-wing group Giovani Democratici della Lombardia, which mobilised quickly to urge the authorities to reconsider, launched a petition with over 140,000 signatures.

Opposition parties are also taking the legal route.

‘The world will laugh at us’

On Sunday, leaders of the Lombardy branch of the Democratic Party met with lawyers to discuss appealing the decision to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR).

Nicola Di Marco, leader of the Five Star Movement  in Lombardy, said naming the airport after Berlusconi was “a sign of the total degradation of Italian institutions” and that “the world will laugh at us.”

Green-Left Alliance Deputy Marco Grimaldi also commented on the situation.

“I would be ashamed to take a flight from Falcone and Borsellino Airport and land at Silvio Berlusconi Airport,” he said, referring to the two magistrates killed by the Mafia in 1992 for their fight against organised crime.

Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala addressed Berlusconi’s eldest daughter on social media.

“Dear Marina, I have always considered you an intelligent person, and your recent statements have confirmed this. You have experienced firsthand how much your father was both loved and hated. But wouldn’t it have been better to wait, to let tempers cool, and allow history to read your father’s story more calmly? Why must we take sides again so soon, given how this decision was made?” he wrote.

Sala refers to his complaint to the Italian Civil Aviation Authority, which decided on the name without consulting SEA, which runs Milan’s airports.

(Alessia Peretti | Euractiv.it)

Read more with Euractiv