Italy: Sardine star has ties with Soros network

The former volunteer in the election campaigns of the former President of the United States Barack Obama and lauded by the organisation of the financier George Soros, Elly Schlein is the new darling of the Italian left.

She is 34 years old, and supported Stefano Bonaccini’s candidacy in Emilia-Romagna with the list “Brave Emilia Romagna”, collecting a total of 22 098 personal votes, distributed among the colleges of Bologna, Reggio Emilia and Ferrara.

It is a real record for the young face of the left born in Lugano (Switzerland), from an Italian mother and an American father. As you can read on her website, her paternal grandfather, Harry Schlein, emigrated to the United States from an Eastern European family.

After graduating from the Liceo di Lugano, in 2004 she returned to Italy to attend the University of Bologna. In 2008, Schlein left for Chicago to volunteer in the Obama election campaign. She returned to Chicago in 2012 to train new volunteers for Obama’s reelection.

After graduating with two theses on the criminalization and over-representation of migrants in prison, and on the rights of foreigners in constitutional jurisprudence, she worked on a documentary by Roland Sejko, which recounts the collective escape of thousands of people on large and small ships from Albania to Italy. Immigration and the protection of migrants’ rights, is therefore, one of her main interests.

After supporting the candidacy of Pippo Civati in the primaries of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein was elected to the European Parliament, joining the Development, Civil Liberties Justice and Home Affairs and Gender Equality Commissions.

In 2016, the young MEP was appointed rapporteur for the Socialist and Democratic group on the reform of the Dublin Regulation. Always attentive to issues related to the environment, rights and immigration, she naturally decided to support Bonaccini in Emilia Romagna in the last elections.

But a video with Matteo Salvini actually pushed her into the limelight, reaching a large number of voters. “Matteo, I am a former colleague of yours at the European Parliament, do you remember?”

She spoke to Salvini, after having stopped him at the end of a meeting. “I have to ask you a question. Why did you never come to the 22 meetings on the Dublin agreement negotiations?” Salvini had said that he would not be attending since the rule places an unfair burden on Mediterranean countries and creates “an obvious imbalance in management, numbers and costs”.

Former Interior Minister Salvini said in 2018 that he was “very satisfied” over the rejection of the proposed Dublin Regulation reform by seven countries, including Italy, and called it “a victory for us”.

“We had held an opposing position, and other countries came to stand behind us; we broke the front,” Salvini told the media in Luxembourg at the time. “That means it’s not true that it’s not possible to influence European policies,” he said.

The seven countries that rejected the draft Dublin Regulation reform presented by the Bulgarian EU presidency were Italy, Spain, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia. Estonia, Poland and Great Britain did not express an opinion.

The other 18 countries, despite being unsatisfied, expressed willingness to leave the door open to negotiations. Among those countries are Greece, Malta, and Cyprus, thus breaking ranks with the Mediterranean front.

Due to the Dublin Regulation, Italy has taken the brunt of asylum seeker applications and is required to take on the responsibility of accepting or rejecting them.

Thanks to her commitment to migrants and an “open society”, Elly Schlein has been included in on the list of “friendly” MEPs to the financier George Soros, a great supporter of the American Democratic Party.

As Italia Oggi pointed out, the list was compiled by the “philanthropic” organisation Open Society Foundation, which operates as a political lobby on behalf of the billionaire, and is still available on the web, although some interested parties have denied any connection.

Schlein is included not only in the overall list (page XV), but also in that of the “friends” most active on the topics dear to Soros, on page 67.

Just like Soros, Schlein is a fan of the Sardines, a movement pretending to be a spontaneous “grassroots” initiative against the League of Salvini.