While Giuseppe Conte had brought with him a voluminous documentation, Giorgia Meloni appeared without papers before the Honorary Jury of the Chamber.
They were not needed, is the thesis of her prime minister, to defend herself from the accusation of forgery raised against her by the leader of the M5s after her speech in Parliament on the ESM.
For an hour the Prime Minister was listened to by the commissioners of the commission, confirming the version expressed on 12 and 13 December, first in Montecitorio and then in the Senate, when she accused Conte of having given "Italian consent to a ratification of the ESM " in 2021 "without a parliamentary mandate, without having the power, without telling the Italians and with the cover of darkness".
With the hearing of the two parties involved, the Jury's investigation concluded, as explained by the vice president of the Chamber Giorgio Mulè (FI), who chairs it, confirming that the decision is expected by February 9th.
The contents of the session were tight-lipped among the commissioners and at Palazzo Chigi.
Meloni's choice, explain parliamentary sources, was to present a reconstruction of the facts, in her view, so linear that it did not require supporting documentation.
A sequence of steps which, the Prime Minister is convinced, embarrassed Italy because an international agreement was signed for which there was not at the time, and there is not currently, a favorable parliamentary majority.
According to her line, it cannot be argued that there was a clear parliamentary mandate for the signature.
For the prime minister, the resolution of 9 December 2020 to which Conte referred was generic and vague, and her thesis - according to the same sources - insists on the fact that the former prime minister, in parliamentary interventions in the midst of a government crisis, specified that he did not there was a majority in favor of the ESM.
Meloni's defense would also have touched on the document she waved in the Senate, the fax sent by the then Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio to the ambassador in Brussels with the green light to sign the ESM reform: it is dated 20 January 2021, the - the prime minister would have underlined - following the opening of the government crisis.
Its reconstruction would have been completed with the observation that Ambassador Maurizio Massari "in any case" signed the agreement on January 27, despite the fact that the government, which resigned the day before, was only in office for current affairs, without a majority parliamentarian in favor of the Mes.
The two hearings and the parliamentary documents called into question are the material on the basis of which Mulè and the other four commissioners (Alessandro Colucci of Noi Moderati, Stefano Vaccari of the Pd, Fabrizio Cecchetti of the League and Filiberto Zaratti of Avs) will decide whether they are founded or minus the expressions used by Meloni, which Conte believes are untrue.
The report will be read within three weeks in the House and the House will have to take note of it, without voting or debate, as per the rules.
Mulè has no doubts about the impartiality of the commission: "Maybe the judgment won't satisfy everyone but that should matter little to us."
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