18/07/2019 (Agence Europe) – The Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, said that the MEPs of the 5-star Movement voted for a European Commission that "was born without the possibility of doing anything" (see EUROPE 12297/1). "When you are born with eight different voices, mixing opposing ends of the spectrum... It is as if, in an Italian context, this Commission was born with the voices of Berlusconi, Renzi and Di Maio. It is a pity, we could have initiated a historic change for Europe", he said on Thursday 18 July, at the end of the informal meeting of Interior Ministers in Helsinki (see EUROPE 12299/1). But for him, the choice of the Dutchman Frans Timmermans as head of the Commission would have been "more worrying", because he had in him "the prospect of harsher sanctions against Poland and Hungary". (MB)