Berlusconi clan returning to Italian politics – Bloomberg

The two eldest children of late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are reportedly meeting with advisers to discuss ways of bringing their father’s political party back to power and challenge PM Giorgia Meloni’s ruling Brothers of Italy party, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Silvio Berlusconi passed away last year at the age of 86. He was Italy’s longest-serving post-war prime minister, ruling the country for much of the 1990s and 2000s at the helm of the Forza Italia party, which he founded in 1994.

According to Bloomberg, since late July, Berlusconi’s children, Marina and Pier Silvio, have been meeting with their father’s longtime political fixer, Gianni Letta, and the former European Parliament president who is now Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani. The Berlusconis have reportedly been sharing ideas with them on the economy, their business empire, as well as the future of the Forza Italia party.

Marina, 58, currently runs the Berlusconi family holding company Fininvest SpA, while her brother Pier Silvio, 55, is in charge of the MediaForEurope media conglomerate, formerly known as Mediaset.

The outlet claims that the Berlusconi clan has been aiming to move out of the corporate world and rejuvenate Forza Italia’s aging ranks and get it to the point where it can challenge the Brothers of Italy party – its senior coalition partner.

The late prime minister’s children have also reportedly been trying to influence government policy, apparently attempting to prevent new taxes on bank profits from being introduced, according to Bloomberg.

“The Berlusconis are preparing themselves,” Giovanni Orsina, the head of the politics department at LUISS University in Rome, told Bloomberg. He suggested that one of Berlusconi’s children could even “take the field” if Meloni goes “into crisis mode” and creates a power vacuum.

Bloomberg’s report comes as Meloni’s party has found itself at odds with some of its political allies, as well as the country’s intelligence services, while Rome has also been clashing with Brussels over budget policy. 

According to the outlet, it is believed that the Berlusconi clan intends to seize this opportunity to return to power and is already “mobilizing behind the scenes,” reportedly putting even more pressure on Meloni’s team.