In an unusual move, Italy’s president sharply rebuked Elon Musk for weighing in on Italy’s immigration debate in a series of posts on Mr. Musk’s X platform.
In one of a flurry of posts, Mr. Musk wrote on Tuesday, “These judges need to go.” He was referring to the Roman judges who on Monday put on hold the government’s request to place a group of migrants in Albania as part of a new plan to outsource asylum requests to the Balkan country.
In a related post on Wednesday, Mr. Musk wrote: “This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”
On Wednesday, Mr. Musk’s posts prompted a sharp reaction by Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, who said in a statement that Italy “can take care of herself.” He added, “Anyone, especially if, as announced, they are about to assume an important government role in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot assume the task of imparting prescriptions.”
Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person who since Donald J. Trump’s election as the U.S. president has also become America’s most powerful private citizen, has a history of weighing in on other country’s domestic matters, and has posted in favor of Italy’s anti-immigration policies. (On Tuesday, Mr. Trump named Mr. Musk to help lead a body “to dismantle government bureaucracy.”)
The statement on Wednesday was an unusual intervention by Mr. Mattarella, who is Italy’s head of state but not part of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government. Among his duties, he presides over the high council of the judiciary, the branch’s self-governing body that ensures the magistrates’ autonomy and independence.
Critics of Ms. Meloni’s government praised Mr. Mattarella’s reaction and attacked Ms. Meloni, who considers herself a friend of Mr. Musk, for failing to condemn the entrepreneur’s intrusion despite having built her political identity around the protection of Italy’s sovereignty.
Ms. Meloni’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but Giovanbattista Fazzolari, a government under secretary, said that Ms. Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, “has always been attentive to the issue, rejecting any attempt of foreign interference in our internal affairs.”
Mr. Musk had weighed in before on the longstanding conflict between Italy’s conservative politicians and the judicial system, and has backed Italy’s far-right politicians in their fight against nongovernmental organizations that rescue migrants at sea.
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Sea Watch International, a German organization that runs rescue ships in the central Mediterranean, sharply criticized Mr. Musk’s statements on Italy’s judiciary. In response Mr. Musk posted on X that Sea Watch was “a criminal organization.”
Sea Watch responded in a post that “our only ‘crime’ is to bear witness of the brutal policies at sea.” It also said, “You might not care about people drowning, but you sure love watching Twitter sink.”
Mr. Musk has also shown support for the far-right Italian leader Matteo Salvini, who is on trial in Italy for preventing a boat carrying rescued migrants from docking in Italy. Mr. Salvini’s party is a coalition partner in Ms. Meloni’s government, and he is her deputy prime minister and minister of transportation.
“Outrageous that he is on trial for enforcing the law!” Mr. Musk wrote on X this spring about Mr. Salvini.
Mr. Musk’s statements come at a particularly tense time between Italy’s conservative government and the country’s judiciary.
Ms. Meloni has pushed through an anti-migration plan that would force some asylum seekers headed for Italy into a detention center in Albania while their claims are heard. The plan, which some European leaders regarded as a potential blueprint for handling immigration, was recently halted by Roman judges who ruled that a group of migrants taken to Albania last month could not be held there. The court said their detention would violate a European court ruling.
The decision revived an old battle between the judges and the country’s conservative politicians, who accused Italian magistrates of overreach and of having a liberal bias and a political agenda.
On Monday, the judges refused to approve the government’s request to hold a second group of seven migrants in Albania, sending the question to the Court of Justice of the European Union. It was not clear when that court would examine the case.
Judicial reach is not the only area where Mr. Musk has aligned with Ms. Meloni. The two share concerns over Italy’s demographic decline and the development of artificial intelligence. Last week, Ms. Meloni said she had talked to Mr. Musk after Mr. Trump’s election. She posted a picture of them together, adding that “his commitment and his vision can be an important resource for the United States and for Italy.”
In September, Ms. Meloni chose Mr. Musk to introduce her as she received a Global Citizen Award from the Atlantic Council, a Washington research group. Pictures of their interactions during the event elicited speculation online, to the point that Mr. Musk wrote a post stating, “We are not dating.”
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