President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella this morning laid a laurel wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Altar of the Fatherland to mark the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation. Also present at the celebration were Ignazio La Russa, President of the Senate of the Republic; Lorenzo Fontana, President of the Chamber of Deputies; Giorgia Meloni, President of the Council of Ministers; Giovanni Amoroso, President of the Constitutional Court; Guido Crosetto, Minister of Defense; and civil and military authorities. Afterwards, the President of the Republic visited Genoa, a city with a Gold Medal for Military Valor. In his speech, the President of the Republic stressed that “the Resistance set itself the goal of achieving peace as a normal condition of relations between peoples. At stake were the reasons of life against the exaltation of the cult of death, posed as an extreme desperate delivery by the republican bands. The Resistance was growing in all European countries under Nazi domination. Solidarity, capable of overcoming the legacies of recent wartime events, was emerging from the common cause. Also from the various Resistances arose the idea of the Europe of the peoples, today embodied by the popular sovereignty expressed by the Strasbourg Parliament. It was anti-fascist exponents who elaborated the idea of a united Europe, against the tragedy of nationalisms that had triggered the European civil wars. (…) Defending the freedom of the European peoples is a shared task. Now, equality, the affirmation of the rule of law, cooperation, the same freedom and democracy, have become common goods of the European peoples to be protected by all the parties to the European Union pact.”
25 April – Liberation Day
