| ROME Defence, spending, Starlink: Italy’s big decisions ahead of NATO summit. President Sergio Mattarella has convened the Supreme Defence Council for 8 May to tackle a packed agenda: the EU’s White Paper on defense, military modernization, strategic infrastructure, and the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East. At the centre of the discussion is Italy’s commitment to meet NATO’s 2% GDP defence spending goal – a stance the government appears united on. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed it in Washington during her meeting with Donald Trump, while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani went further, claiming Italy will announce it has already hit the target at June’s NATO summit. Another hot topic is “strategic infrastructure,” widely seen as code for Elon Musk’s Starlink. Talks are currently on ice, according to Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, who blamed political noise. President Mattarella is reportedly cautious about foreign-controlled networks, but Deputy PM Matteo Salvini is pushing ahead, calling for tech choices based on performance, not politics. (Alessia Peretti | Euractiv.it)
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LISBON
Portugal: PM denies speeding up immigrant removal before election. The PSD leader denied on Sunday that the process of notifying thousands of immigrants to leave Portugal in a few weeks has been accelerated due to the elections and criticised the opposition "for only focusing on bad-mouthing the government". Halfway through a visit to the Cantarinhas Fair in Bragança, on the first day of the official campaign, the AD delegation stopped for a coffee and Luís Montenegro was once again asked about the topic that marked the pre-campaign Saturday: the government's announcement that the Agency for Migration Integration and Asylum (AIMA) will start notifying 4,574 foreign citizens next week to leave the country voluntarily within 20 days. “Things aren't happening because there are elections. Things are happening because the process started in June last year. It hasn't been accelerated now. It hasn't been accelerated at all," he assured, saying that “the process has to run and it can't stop” because of the snap elections on 18 May. On this subject, Montenegro said that the government had started by creating a mission structure and service centres, and had multiplied AIMA's service capacity "sevenfold". When asked about the PS's criticism that the AD campaign has been "Trumpised," Montenegro said he didn't want to comment on "what others say" but ended up replying. "There's a problem with the opposition in Portugal at the moment: they're too focused on just bad-mouthing the government. I used to be in the opposition, I sometimes said good things about the government, and I also recognised what the government did well. And I think voters like that, they like someone who is in opposition and yet recognises that we need to work in the same direction," he said. Still on immigration, the caretaker government's prime minister considered it possible to "strike a good balance between all those born and grow up and live in Portugal and those who come here to work". "At the moment, the government has information that around 18,000 of the cases that were pending do not fulfil the conditions to be approved and 4,500 of them have already been decided," he said, saying that after the notifications, people can appeal or there may be cases in which the state can't even contact them. "This isn't about coming and taking them by force and taking them out, it's about notifying the person who can complain. If they can't fulfil the requirements, they must leave," he says. (Sara Madeira – edited by Pedro Sousa Carvalho | Lusa.pt) | 