Populist premier Giuseppe Conte has asked France's president Emmanuel Macron to allow the extradition of former far-left militants who were given lifelong protection by France under a policy adopted by socialist French president Francois Mitterrand in 1985.
"French president Emmanuel Macron and I discussed the fugitives who are in France and agreed that our justice ministers will hold talks on this issue," Conte told reporters in Brussels following a meeting there with Macron on Friday.
"I asked him to refute the Mitterand doctrine," Conte said, adding that Macron had shown "flexibility" over the dozen or more former far-left fugitives from Italian justice who have been living in France since the 1980s.
Former Marxist communist militant Cesare Battisti was extradited to Italy in January after living for more than a decade in Brazil, where he fled from France in 2006 when the European Court of Justice ruled he could be extradited. He had lived in France for 16 years and first fled there from Italy in 1981 after escaping from jail.
Battisti is currently serving a life sentence in Italy for four murders committed during the 1970s.
