Vannacci's Party Wants to Abolish the Crime of Femicide and Threatens Meloni from the Right. The General's Rise Through the Eyes of La Repubblica

Italian retired general Roberto Vannacci concluded the founding congress of his new party, Futuro Nazionale (National Future), over the weekend, and immediately declared what sets him apart from the entire governing right: he wants to abolish the crime of femicide, which Italy introduced just six months ago. The party, which has not yet contested any national elections, claims more than 100,000 members — according to its own figures, more than Salvini's League, which Vannacci left in early February. La Repubblica does not see this as a marginal episode but as a direct threat to Giorgia Meloni — precisely at the moment when the prime minister is about to break Berlusconi's record for the longest unbroken tenure in government.

What Repubblica writes

Repubblica devoted a series of articles to the congress and frames it sharply. It wrote about the party's founding as "black" — an epithet that in Italy refers to the fascist legacy — and quoted the defiant slogan with which Vannacci appropriated an insult from his critics: his people are, he says, "proud to be scum." La Repubblica ↗

However, the most attention went to his statement about femicide. "Femicide does not exist, it's a murder like any other," the general declared, according to the ANSA agency. In his view, men and women are equal, no one needs special protection, and "this is real equality." ANSA ↗ With this, he is targeting the law that the Italian parliament passed last November with support from both right and left. It made femicide a separate criminal offense punishable by life imprisonment — that is, the killing of a woman for gender-based motives: out of hatred or contempt, out of an attempt to control and possess her, or because she refused a relationship or wanted to leave one. CNN ↗ The impetus was a case that shook Italy more than any other in years: in November 2023, 22-year-old student Giulia Cecchettin was stabbed to death by her former boyfriend Filippo Turetta just days before her graduation, because he could not accept the breakup — exactly the pattern the law targets. The court sentenced him to life in prison, and the young woman's death drove hundreds of thousands of people into the streets. CNN ↗

The editorial team set the voices of victims' relatives against the general: the mother of murdered Pamela Genini called his words "shameful." La Repubblica ↗ He was also rejected within the coalition — Meloni's centrist ally Maurizio Lupi compared him to "a Grillo from the early days of the Vaffa movement," referring to the anti-establishment wave that gave rise to the Five Star Movement, and added that Vannacci "will have no future." La Repubblica ↗

What's new compared to Slovak coverage

Neither Slovak nor Czech newsrooms really covered Vannacci's congress — at most, it reached us through Italian wire-agency reports about his remark on women. La Repubblica's perspective reveals a more serious story: the fragmentation of Europe's sovereigntist right, whose faces include Viktor Orbán and Matteo Salvini.

Vannacci is no newcomer. A former paratrooper commander decorated with the American Legion of Merit, he entered politics after the bestseller Il mondo al contrario (The World Backwards, 2023), for which the army suspended him for 11 months. In the 2024 European elections he became one of the most-voted candidates in the country, but in early February 2026 he left the League and registered his own party. He also parted ways with the European Parliament group Patriots for Europe (Italian media described it as an expulsion) and moved to the Europe of Sovereign Nations group, where Germany's AfD sits.

The congress program reads like a textbook of Central European sovereignism: remigration of foreigners, nuclear energy, an end to the Green Deal, a flat tax for small businesses, and opposition to military aid for Ukraine. Repubblica therefore points out that Vannacci's "real fight is not against the left" but for the right-wing flank of Giorgia Meloni's camp. La Repubblica ↗ Even though the party is still polling only in single digits, in a tightly divided Italy it could determine who wins the 2027 elections.

Limits of this perspective

La Repubblica is a left-liberal newspaper and covers Vannacci as an adversary. At its Repubblica delle Idee festival, it placed him on a "map of those who want to switch off democracy," right next to Vladimir Putin. La Repubblica ↗ Such framing captures liberal Italy's concern, but at the same time flattens the story into a "return of fascism" and fails to explain why the party claims 100,000 members after just four months. Vannacci's repeatedly publicized sympathies for Putin's Russia and his conciliatory remarks about Mussolini are real, but on their own they don't explain who he is attracting today, or why. A more substantive picture of his economic program has come from business media rather than the political desk.

What hotinfo is watching

• Whether Meloni absorbs Vannacci into the coalition, or lets him gather votes on the right ahead of the 2027 elections
• Whether Futuro Nazionale settles permanently into the Europe of Sovereign Nations group (alongside the AfD) and attracts further allies
• How many more lawmakers defect from the League and Forza Italia
• The fate of Italy's femicide law, should the right's center of gravity shift toward Vannacci's position