(Bloomberg) -- Italy should do more to protect auto jobs instead of looking for scapegoats and attacking Fiat owner Stellantis NV, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares said, pushing back against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s criticism.

Meloni last month blasted the company for its efforts to move car production to lower-cost countries at a time when the auto industry is struggling to shift to electrification. 

Asked about Meloni’s attack, Tavares told Bloomberg in an interview Wednesday: “All of this, it’s a scapegoat, trying to avoid to take responsibility for the fact that if you don’t give subsidies to purchase EVs, you are putting at risk the Italian plants.”

Amsterdam-based Stellantis, which owns brands including Fiat, Maserati and Alfa Romeo, had come under fire in Italy amid reports it sent its Italian suppliers a letter flagging investment opportunities in Morocco, a country several companies in the industry are turning to for cheaper electric-vehicle production.

“If you don’t want EVs to progress, you just have to stop the subsidies,” Tavares said. “It’s obvious that the Italian government has been doing that. The EV market in Italy is very, very small. It’s a direct consequence of the fact that the Italian government does not subsidize the purchasing of EVs.”

The 65-year-old CEO has been managing Stellantis — a behemoth with 14 brands created by the 2021 merger of Italy’s Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group — with a tight fist and relentless cost cuts that have led to record profitability. 

Selloff

Last month, Meloni also hinted that the touted merger was in fact a selloff of FCA to the French.

“I don’t always agree with the French government,” Tavares said. “Stellantis is not in the hands of the French government.” 

Reacting to Tavares’s remarks, Italy’s Industry Minister Adolfo Urso told reporters Thursday: “If Tavares believes Italy should do like France, which increased its active participation in Stellantis, let them ask us for it.”

“The difference between France and us is that they are in the share capital and we aren’t,” Urso said. “Make a request and we can discuss it together.”

The balance between Italy and France on the Stellantis board has been a point of friction between the two countries. France owns a 6.1% stake in Stellantis via state-owned Bpifrance, and has representatives on the company’s board of directors. 

Public Squabbles

Italy has no stake and no representatives. Still, Tavares never shies away from criticizing politicians and has also had public squabbles with French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire. The CEO has been unwilling to cave in to Le Maire’s request to produce some cheaper EV models locally.

Tavares cited plants in Mirafiori, where the company produces the electric Fiat 500, and its factory in Pomigliano, near Naples, as sites where jobs are more at risk from Meloni’s policies. Meloni’s government wants Stellantis to produce 1 million vehicles in Italy a year, with Stellantis increasingly under scrutiny for its cost cutting. 

At the Stellantis plant of Atessa last month during a visit, Tavares was very vocal in praising the company’s Italian workers.

“When we are happy, then we are happy,” Tavares said. “In the case of Atessa, they have reduced their cost by 30%. They have improved their quality sevenfold. It’s quite outstanding, which means they are in control of their destiny.”

“When we manage our plants, we don’t do it in function of our mood,” Tavares added. “Of course, the fact that we are very fact-based is often used by the people that do not want to recognize the success of Stellantis. They are using it against us by saying that we are financially driven, we are cold, that we are inhuman.”

Meloni’s government is also not taking into account the fact that Tavares is Portuguese, not French, he said.

“If we talk about the French mandate that they are trying to use as a scapegoat, they just ignore that the CEO of the company is a Portuguese guy,” he said.

--With assistance from Alberto Brambilla.

(Updates with minister’s remarks in ninth, tenth paragraphs)

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