Italy’s Culture Ministry rocked by dismissals as Meloni struggles to reshape landscape

By Crispian Balmer

ROME, May 11 (Reuters) – Italy’s Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli has sacked two senior aides after uproar over denied funding for a documentary, adding to turbulence at a ministry already shaken by months of resignations and political infighting.

The upheavals are the latest in a series of controversies that have dogged efforts by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government to reshape an Italian cultural landscape which she complained has been dominated by the left.

Italian media reported that Giuli had fired Emanuele Merlino, head of the ministry’s technical secretariat, and Elena Proietti, head of the minister’s private office.

There was no official communication, but senior government figures subsequently confirmed the news on Monday.

The move follows a fracas over the ministry’s refusal to grant funding to a documentary on Giulio Regeni, the Italian student who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in Cairo in early 2016 — a death Italy has blamed on Egyptian security forces. 

Giuli had described the denial of funding as “unacceptable” and said he had not been aware of the decision. 

Merlino is reported to have been sacked over the handling of the funding issue. Proietti’s removal was reported to stem from a separate incident in which she failed to appear at the airport for a ministerial mission to New York last month.

Neither has commented on their sacking, while the Culture Ministry has declined to comment.

CULTURE WARS 

Merlino and Proietti are prominent figures in right-wing politics, and opposition politicians leapt on their sackings as a sign of growing internal dissent within Meloni’s coalition following its defeat in a referendum on justice reform in March.

“This is the sign of a coalition riven by internal wars, score-settling, clashes between factions and competing leaderships,” said Sandro Ruotolo, the culture spokesman for the centre-left Democratic Party.

The turmoil is the latest to batter the Culture Ministry during Meloni’s rule, including the resignation of Giuli’s predecessor, Gennaro Sangiuliano, in 2024, and a subsequent wave of abrupt sackings and departures.

Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has sought to increase the right’s influence over leading cultural institutions, including theatres and museums.

However, the transition is not going smoothly.

Last month, Beatrice Venezi, a conductor close to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, was sacked as the musical director of Venice’s La Fenice opera house, after publicly saying the orchestra was tainted by nepotism.

At the same time, the prestigious Venice Biennale art fair has been engulfed by controversy after another government appointee let Russia return to the event, much to the fury of Giuli and Meloni, who saw it as a betrayal of Ukraine in the ongoing war.

(Reporting by Crispian BalmerEditing by Keith Weir)