Italy’s foreign minister on Thursday said the killing of a far-right activist in France “is a serious matter that concerns us all”, after Paris told Rome to keep out of its affairs.
In a statement on X, Antonio Tajani said there had been similar incidents to the fatal beating of Quentin Deranque in Italy’s history, and said condemning such incidents aims “to ensure that we do not return to a terrible past”.
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French President Emmanuel Macron had earlier called on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to stop “commenting on what is happening in other people’s countries”, after she expressed shock at Deranque’s death.
“The killing of a young French activist, in a university setting, is a serious matter that concerns us all, an episode that must be condemned without hesitation,” Tajani wrote.
He said “there have been many Quentins in Italy, some during the darkest periods of the Republic,” a reference to the so-called “Years of Lead”.
From the late 1960s to the 1980s, armed groups from the extreme left and extreme right carried out bombings and assassinations across Italy.
“Condemning episodes like the one in Lyon also serves this purpose — to ensure that we do not return to a terrible past in Italy as well,” Tajani said.
The death of the 23-year-old Deranque has fuelled tensions between France’s far-right and hard-left.
On Wednesday, Meloni lamented a “climate of ideological hatred” and said the death of Deranque “is a wound for all of Europe”.
Tajani is part of Meloni’s hard-right government but they are not in the same party.
He leads the late Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party, whereas she leads the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party.