World

EU Commissioner and RAI top management: A sticky August for Meloni

Published

1 year ago

August 5, 2024

EU Commissioner and RAI top management: A sticky August for Meloni

This article was originally published in Italian

The Italian Prime Minister is wrestling with choices over who to nominate as the next EU Commissioner, and the new Board of Directors of the public media network RAI. Both choices involve wrangling within her coalition, and were complicated by the recent EU rule of law report.

It will not be an August of holidays and relaxation for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. By 30 August the Italian prime minister must submit nominations to the European Commission for the European executive: a crucial appointment for Meloni. For months she has been aiming for a position of weight for Italy, preferably an economic portfolio, but the match is not a foregone conclusion since her influence and that of her European Conservatives and Reformists group has been reduced in Brussels.

Before that decision, theoretically by Friday, when parliamentary work closes for the summer holidays, the premier must appoint the new top management to public broadcaster RAI. This decision has now become urgent following the announcement on 24 July of RAI president Marinella Soldi’s resignation.

The two apparently discrete decisions are more intertwined than they appear. Firstly by the publication in late July of the European Commission’s report on the rule of law, which put the management of RAI by Italian politics under the magnifying glass. And secondly by the delicate relationship of Meloni with her coalition allies in the government majority, united in Italy but aligned in three different groups in Europe.

The (bumpy) race for the economic portfolio in the EU Commission

Although Italy has not yet formally presented its candidatures in Brussels, the most cited name is that of the current Minister for European Affairs, Raffaele Fitto, former vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament.

For him – or whoever she chooses – Meloni would like the Cohesion portfolio, the commissioner who will manage one third of the Union’s budget, oversee the Recovery fund and manage the plan to reduce administrative burdens.

But regardless of the candidate, Meloni’s ambitions could founder over recent frictions with Brussels and, in particular, with re-elected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The Italian premier first challenged the six recommendations to Italy in a letter and then, in a press conference from Beijing, contained in the Commission’s report on the development of the rule of law in the member states.

‘Dear Ursula’: Meloni’s letter on political interference at RAI

What ired Meloni enough to address a letter personally to von der Leyen from China, where she was on an official visit from 28 to 31 July, was the section on freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Italy, in which Brussels said it was concerned about cases of intimidation of journalists by politicians, the lack of protection of professional secrecy and journalistic sources, the delay in reforming the law on defamation, as well as interference by politicians in RAI.

In her ‘dear Ursula’ letter, Meloni claimed that “the recommendations to Italy do not particularly differ from those of previous years,** however for the first time the content of this document has been distorted for political use by some in an attempt to attack the Italian government”, she wrote, in a thinly veiled reference to the opposition and the newspapers most critical of the right-wing executive.

Then she dwelt on the three points she considered most critical, all concerning RAI and the interference of the political class in the management and editorial line of the public broadcast network, denying bias on the part of her government.

“We have received Meloni’s letter and we are evaluating it,” spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said on 30 July, stressing that the report is the “result” of consultations with the member states themselves and thus individual national governments. Meloni, returning to the issue in the first press point from Beijing on the same day, was keen to specify that the letter was nothing more than a ‘common reflection’ and that relations with the European Commission are not deteriorating.

Meloni’s rise and fall in Brussels

Perhaps so, but the episode certainly does not come at a rosy moment. In less than two months, the President of the Council has seen her newly gained influence in Brussels decline, and there is no doubt that she has had to take a few blows.

In the run-up to the European elections Meloni was courted by both the extreme right and von der Leyen – who had even said she was willing to welcome Fratelli d’Italia into the EPP – and was now considered the post-vote kingmaker. She who, thanks to the success in the polls of the ultra-conservatives, could have moved the Union to the right, and demanded for the members of her group some high office.

But then the extreme right did not break through, the traditional groups in the European parliament were able to re-establish and decide on new appointments. Meloni protested, tried unsuccessfully to influence the decision-making process, and then found herself forced by circumstances to oppose von der Leyen’s re-election, taking Italy out of the European majority for the first time.

According to the premier, all this will have no repercussions on appointments to the European executive: “I am talking to von der Leyen,” Meloni assured from China. But the Financial Times has ascribed recent events as showing ‘signs of subsidence’ in the relationship between Rome and Brussels, saying the choice of commissioner will be a ‘key test’ of Meloni’s reputation in the EU.

Meloni’s problems do not end there, however. Complicating the political game in Brussels – and in Rome – is the relationship with her government allies, with Lega’s Matteo Salvini trying to corner her in order to steal votes from her on the right. It is also because of these internal tensions within the Italian majority that Meloni could not support her ‘friend Ursula’.

Now she will need the approval of her Lega and Forza Italia coalition partners to propose candidates for the Commission, a situation in which mediation is necessary and, perhaps, also concessions on other dossiers, such as those Rai appointments.

The stalemate on RAI top appointments

The RAI dossier has been on the Prime Minister’s calendar for weeks, but the game has been accelerated by Soldi’s resignation, which came at the worst possible moment. RAI has never been so much in the spotlight since the time of the second Berlusconi government, in Italy and in Europe. Because of the fuss raised by the Brussels rule of law report and the numerous accusations of interference in the editorial line of the public network – now dubbed “TeleMeloni” by opposition and critics.

Several members of the Democratic Party, the 5-Star Movement and the Green Left Alliance criticised the Prime Minister’s ‘irritating’ and ‘victimising’ remarks in her letter to von der Leyen, asking Meloni to appear before the RAI supervisory commission to give explanations. They are now questioning the possible connection of the affair with the appointments of the new board of directors, taking the opportunity to call for a reform of RAI governance.

Others considered that the letter indicated the prime minister’s desire to speed up the appointments: addressed more to domestic public opinion than to a European institutional interlocutor, an attempt to counter opposition narrative on bias within RAI and to overcome the stalemate affecting those imminent board appointments.

In fact the coalition remains far off even agreeing on the day to vote on the members of the board of directors, the first of several steps required to arrive at the new command structure of the network.

The League is pushing for a prominent position and may be satisfied

The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate must choose two board members each, two others are appointed by the Council of Ministers on the proposal of the Minister of the Economy and one by RAI employees. After the vote, the new board of directors meets to elect the CEO and indicate the president, which must then be submitted to the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission for a vote.

Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia would like to close the issue before the summer break, but many in the coalition’s governing majority, especially the League, would like to postpone everything until September. A meeting of the parliamentary group leaders is scheduled for today to set a date for the vote, and according to Ansa, citing internal sources, a centre-right summit is also set to be held to take stock of the dossier.

The thorny issue remains the appointment of the new RAI president. According to ANSA, the Italian press agency, Meloni will try to close the circle on the names, starting with the president, who must have the endorsement of two-thirds of the Supervisory Commission with the necessary help, therefore, of part of the opposition.

According to this thesis, Fratelli would accept Simona Agnes (nominated by Forza Italia) as president and Giampaolo Rossi (its own nominee) as managing director, while the League would have a councillor.

Salvini, however, is pushing to nominate the director general and others are convinced that in the end one of the current production directors will take the leadership.

The RAI nomination game is an internal one, but one that could end up weighing on the European front if there is no agreement between the majority parties and the decision-making drags on.

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World

To Give FIFA’s Roblox Deal Context, Look at YouTube

Published

2 hours ago

December 22, 2025

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To Give FIFA’s Roblox Deal Context, Look at YouTube

Corporate boardrooms are trying to wrap their heads around how to leverage mobile-focused video game behemoth Roblox for their own gain, similar to how they were once forced to adapt to the rise of YouTube.

Like YouTube, Roblox diverges from the entertainment status quo. Both are driven by a sprawling network of content creators, many of whom begin as independent developers with little technical knowledge, and their audiences skew young. YouTube gives people tools to publish videos and an app in which users can watch them; Roblox gives people tools to build video games and an app in which users can play them.

Because of how Roblox games originate, they do not look as polished as those from big-budget studios on Xbox or PlayStation consoles. The graphics are rudimentary, and the games are most often played via mobile devices. Yet Roblox’s offerings, which are mostly free to play but often sell in-game cosmetic items and power-ups, can still be wildly popular, amassing more than 100 million daily active players. As Sportico has reported, mobile gaming is significantly larger than console usage globally.

Roblox’s grittier feel—akin to the appeal of an at-home YouTube vlog—is an asset. That said, it’s a trait that poses a challenge for brands, which feel a need to get involved but must do so in a way that comes off as organic within the raw aesthetics of the platform.

Enter the middlemen. Companies such as Gamefam connect native Roblox games and their creators with brands, reminiscent of the multi-channel networks (MCNs) that proliferated YouTube in the early 2010s and signed video makers to content partnerships.

The middlemen assume development and commercial responsibilities upon gaining a game’s rights. They implement corporate markings while ensuring a title still resonates with users.

On Friday, Gamefam announced the release of FIFA Super Soccer—a rebrand of a popular game it already owned, Super League Soccer. FIFA Super Soccer is one of many Roblox titles Gamefam has acquired from independent creators. As part of its adaptation, it added licensed properties related to FIFA, teams and some of FIFA’s brand partners, such as Adidas.

Screenshot of “FIFA Super Soccer” on Roblox

In this case, Gamefam has maintained a working relationship with the game maker, Mats Watte, whose original creation did not feature any intellectual property from soccer organizations. Gamefam did not disclose the financial terms of its licensing pact with FIFA that led to the rebranding.

“I was just in a meeting earlier today, and we were talking about, well, this is kind of like a [multi-channel network],” Ricardo Briceno, chief business officer of Gamefam, told Sportico in a video interview ahead of the FIFA Super Soccer announcement. “But it’s also a dirty word these days. So we’re not quite an MCN because it’s not just aggregating, because we also are operating and, like developing and doing things. But I don’t think it’s a bad example. It’s a good connection there.”

Many of YouTube’s multi-channel networks, perhaps most infamously Machinima, ultimately developed negative reputations. Independent creators came to resent the deals they signed, which they considered predatory because of lopsided revenue-sharing terms and long-term restrictions that barred them from working elsewhere.

There are some differences between MCNs and third-party Roblox development companies. For starters, the game, not the creator, is the main product on Roblox. Rather than set a perpetual quota for influencer content production, as was often the case with YouTube MCNs that would burn out video makers, Roblox’s middlemen generally obtain a game that already exists and then handle further development themselves.

Watte, the person who created the game that has morphed into FIFA Super Soccer, is a college student at King’s College London, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has developed games since he was a kid. Watte has spoken positively in public posts about his experiences with Gamefam. When Gamefam helped FIFA integrate Club World Cup branding into what was then called Super League Soccer for a prior agreement, Watte wrote, “Thank you to Gamefam and FIFA for trusting us with this opportunity, and to everyone on my team for making this happen in such a short span of time.”

A spokesperson representing Gamefam declined to specify whether Watte received an upfront payment for FIFA Super Soccer, whether he gets a cut of future revenue related to the title, or whether his role as “Creative Director for FIFA Super Soccer” means he is a full-time, salaried employee.

“We partnered with the game creator to put the backing of a professional studio behind Super League Soccer,” the spokesperson wrote. “In partnership with the original game creator, Gamefam now runs the game in full and provides our live operations capabilities and brand activation expertise. The numbers continue to get better and better as we work together.”

FIFA has a rich history in video games for consoles made by major studios, and until 2022, it maintained a long-term partnership with Electronic Arts. Its breakup with EA removed FIFA from the title of EA’s hit soccer video game franchise. Afterward, FIFA president Gianni Infantino declared that “when [children play] a football simulation game, they play FIFA, it cannot be named something else.” Ahead of the men’s FIFA World Cup next summer, Infantino has been hellbent on besting EA.

FIFA worked with the studio Mythical Games on a separate, non-Roblox project that led to the release of FIFA Rivals in the Apple and Android app stores. It also has a licensing and esports deal with Konami’s eFootball, which is playable on mobile and console.

None of those endeavors, or the new FIFA Super Soccer title sponsorship, carry the same reach of EA Sports’ renamed soccer franchise EA Sports FC. Still, when taken together, they are formidable.

Overall, Roblox has a $60 billion market cap and 111.8 million average daily active users, according to a Sept. 4 financial report. Before it rebranded from Super League Soccer last week, FIFA Super Soccer averaged 1.5 million daily gameplay sessions with a duration of 11 minutes, per Gamefam, though this metric included when the same people opened the game more than once in a 24-hour period.

In the immediate wake of Friday’s name change, FIFA Super Soccer rose into the top 70 for concurrent Roblox users at 21,000, according to a spokesperson. Gamefam works with other sports organizations, including the NFL, on titles that have also made this leaderboard.

As Briceno discusses Roblox integrations with clients who ask how Gamefam’s services can lead to real-world revenue returns, he’s reminded of his own marketing work at previous career stops.

Early in a 12-year tenure at Mattel Inc., Briceno was on the other side, only YouTube was the multimedia puzzle his company was trying to solve.

“We were thinking, we’ve got to get hot,” Briceno said. “Does it drive sales? We know that TV commercials drive sales, but what are we going to do with YouTube, I don’t know if we can measure and blah, blah, blah, and all these things were happening. We said we got to invest in this, this is where the kids are. It just makes logical sense.

“It takes a while until you’re able to generate the data points and the proof points and figure out how to do it in the right way that actually drives scale or sales. … Now we are going through that process on Roblox, and we’ve seen a lot of those early data points, so it just validates what you would think is common sense.”

World

Russian general killed by car bomb, third senior military leader killed this year

Published

3 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Russian general killed by car bomb, third senior military leader killed this year

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A Russian general was killed in a car bombing in Moscow on Monday, with investigators saying they suspect Ukrainian intelligence may have been behind the attack.

The bombing targeted Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, and he died from his injuries. He was the third senior Russian military officer to be killed in a bombing this year.

“Investigators are pursuing numerous lines of inquiry regarding the murder. One of these is that the crime was orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence services,” said Svetlana Petrenko, the spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that President Vladimir Putin had been immediately informed about Sarvarov’s killing.

PUTIN REJECTS KEY PARTS OF US PEACE PLAN AS KREMLIN OFFICIAL WARNS EUROPE FACES NEW WAR RISK: REPORT

This undated image provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, shows Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, who was killed Monday morning after an explosive device detonated under his car in southern Moscow. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Sarvarov had previously fought in Chechnya and taken part in Moscow’s military campaign in Syria, according to Russia’s defense ministry.

Ukrainian forces have yet to take responsibility for the attack.

Prior to Sarvarov, Russia lost the head of its nuclear, biological and chemical protection force, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, in a similar bombing earlier this year. Ukrainian forces took responsibility for that attack.

PUTIN DERIDES EUROPEAN LEADERS AS HE INSISTS RUSSIA’S WAR GOALS IN UKRAINE WILL BE MET BY FORCE OR DIPLOMACY

Policemen secure the area near the scene where Lt. Gen. Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Operational Training Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff, was killed by an explosive device placed under his car in Moscow, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (AP Photo)

Russian military officer Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was also killed by a car bombing in Moscow in April.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in the aftermath of that attack that he had received reports about the successful “liquidation” of Russian military leaders, though he did not mention Moskalik directly.

The Monday bombing comes as Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. remain in peace talks. Russian officials said they were proceeding “constructively” on Sunday, even as missiles rained down on Ukraine’s port city of Odesa.

Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to a journalist’s question during his annual news conference and call-in show at Gostinny Dvor, in Moscow, on Friday, Dec. 19, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Putin also noted on Friday that the nation’s “troops are advancing,” and expressed confidence that Russia would achieve its goals by military force if Ukraine does not accept its peace terms.

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“The goals of the special military operation will undoubtedly be achieved. We would prefer to accomplish this and address the root causes of the conflict through diplomatic means,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on X: @Hagstrom_Anders.

World

Germany charges ex-Syrian prison guard over Assad-era abuses

Published

5 hours ago

December 22, 2025

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Germany charges ex-Syrian prison guard over Assad-era abuses

Prosecutors accuse the official, named as Fahad A, of torturing dozens of prisoners in jail run by Syrian intelligence.

Published On 22 Dec 2025

German prosecutors have charged a former Syrian security official with crimes against humanity, accusing him of torturing dozens of prisoners at a Damascus jail while ex-President Bashar al-Assad was in power.

Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General’s office announced the indictment on Monday, alleging the ex-prison guard, named only as Fahad A, took part in more than 100 interrogations between 2011 and 2012 in which prisoners were “subjected to severe physical abuse”.

Universal jurisdiction

In Germany, prosecutors have ⁠used universal jurisdiction laws to seek trials for suspects in crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world.

Based on ‌these laws, several people suspected of war crimes during the Syrian conflict have been arrested in the last ‍few years in Germany, which is home to about one million Syrians.

In June, a court in Frankfurt handed a life sentence to a Syrian doctor convicted of carrying out acts of torture as part of al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent.

The doctor, Alaa Mousa, was accused of torturing patients at military hospitals in Damascus and Homs, where political prisoners were regularly brought for supposed treatment.

Witnesses described Mousa pouring flammable liquid on a prisoner’s wounds before setting them alight and kicking the man in the face, shattering his teeth. In another incident, the doctor was accused of injecting a detainee with a fatal substance for refusing to be beaten.

One former prisoner described the Damascus hospital where he was held as a “slaughterhouse”.

Presiding judge, Christoph Koller, said the verdict underscored the “brutality of Assad’s dictatorial, unjust regime”.