The “Tajanata”: changing the name of the Foreign Office

It’s a series: the Tajanata. What is Italy’s most meme-worthy minister, Antonio Tajani – or Tony Saint Laurent, our miniskirt designer – up to? He reckons his Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation needs a name change, and that it would be a good idea to add the word ‘trade’ to the cooperation part of the title. How to do it? Simple: with an amendment tabled by D’Attis and Cortellazzo to the PA Decree, a little clause that reads: “The name ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and International Cooperation’ shall, for all purposes and wherever it appears, replace the names ‘Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ and ‘Ministry of International Cooperation’”. The amendment was first shelved, then lapsed – in short, no ‘trade’ – and it is said that FdI and Forza Italia, in committee, even exchanged heated words, engaging in a verbal clash. But why did Tony Saint Laurent dream of this wording? Because he wants to take Adolfo Urso’s place (head of the MIMIT, another renamed ministry: the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy).

He has recently reorganised the structure of the Farnesina because, says Tajani, the ministry “must have two heads: one political and one economic”. Jokes aside, Tajani’s appearance in a miniskirt has earned him a place at Fashion Week, and it is thanks to Tajani that this garment has returned to the limelight (Prada dedicated its entire 2026 collection to it). What is the ‘Tajanata’? It is Nonna Speranza’s Gozzanian phrase, it is the ‘good things in the worst possible taste’, the utterly botched remark by the liberal Tajani, the most defenceless man in the world. He has been widely criticised, yet the truth is that Tajani has revitalised commerce, irony and feminism. Long live the ‘Tajanata’, the adventure of our Marcovaldo minister.