(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 15 - It is crucial that the new European Commission should start immediately, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajanai said Friday saying that Socialists who were against European Conservative and Reformists (ECR) candidate for vice president Raffaele Fitto of Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party were "anti-European".
    "For the good of Europe it is crucial to ensure that the new Commission starts immediately: stopping it would be a very big mistake," Tajani, who is also deputy premier and leader of the centre-right post Berlusconi Forza Italia (FI) party, said after meeting the president of his centre-right European People's Party (EPP) caucus, Manfred Weber of Germany.
    Tajani said that Fitto, minister for European affairs, cohesion, the south and the National recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) who has been tapped as executive vice president with the cohesion brief "is not an extremist, he is a Christian Democrat, and stopping everything, so that he does not have the vice-presidency, because he is a member of the ECR, is the result of ideology.
    "The position of the Socialists is not against the government or against Italy, but against Europe. "Even (Italian President Sergio) Mattarella said yesterday that it is important to have Fitto as vice-president.
    "And Weber, further, does not want the enlargement of the majority".
    The EC appointments have been blocked by the Socialist and Democrats veto on Fitto and the EPP's veto on Spanish Premier Pedro Sanchez's deputy premier and ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera who is facing a showdown over the Valencia floods. (ANSA).