00:00Well of course what happens here in France is felt right across Europe and one country that's had
00:04its fair share of leaders but now been relatively settled with the right wing
00:09Prime Minister Georgia Maloney for almost three years now is of course Italy. So let's cross to
00:14Rome. We're going to talk to our correspondent Josephine McKenna who joins us from there.
00:19Josephine has there been any kind of official reaction there in Italy to what's happened here
00:23in France over the last 24 hours? We haven't seen any reaction yet from the Prime Minister
00:29Georgia Maloney but we've seen a huge reaction in the media overnight. One headline describing it
00:35as the last tango for the French government and another one saying that this political chaos in
00:43France would not be displeasing to the Prime Minister Georgia Maloney who has had a bit of a topsy-turvy
00:48relationship with the President Emmanuel Macron. On the other hand the Deputy Prime Minister who's
00:54more moderate Antonio Tajani has said that the upheaval we're seeing in France is in nobody's
01:01best interest particularly because France is such a powerful economy, one of the founders of the
01:06European Union. One person who might be cheering on his ally Marine Le Pen is the other Deputy Prime
01:15Minister, the leader of the far right Matteo Salvini who sees any kind of upheaval and any opportunity
01:22to advance the interests of Marine Le Pen and her national rally as an opportunity for him to
01:28strengthen his own position within the coalition here in Italy.
01:33Josephine, I mean there's no love lost perhaps is there between Francois Beirut, the outgoing Prime
01:38Minister and Georgia Maloney. He accused her during his time of pursuing an aggressive tax policy to
01:45attract large fortunes.
01:47That's right, just recently Francois Beirut accused the Italian government of what he called fiscal dumping,
01:55creating tax breaks to attract investors and foreign businesses at the expense of France.
02:01The Prime Minister Georgia Maloney hit back very strongly saying that was completely unfounded.
02:07But what we are seeing in the press today is a little bit of a smug response I think from the Italians
02:14thinking that the French debt is considerable yet in Italy and Greece the burden, the tax burden
02:22is of course much higher. So it's not a time for the Italians to be celebrating their own economy,
02:28their own economic fortunes at the expense of the French because I think many people here
02:33are on reflection, see that the economic problems and the political challenges that we're seeing
02:38in France have implications for the rest of Europe.
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