Meloni: 'Italy and France are linked, there is a need to collaborate'

Meloni: 'Italy and France are linked, there is a need to collaborate'

From now on “we will do more and better”.
It's a kind of restart that takes place at the Elysée, where Emmanuel Macron welcomes Giorgia Meloni on her first visit to Paris since taking over the leadership of Italy eight months ago.

Differences, the French president pragmatically admits, have existed and will exist but the ties between Italy and France are many and varied, “a story deeper than us”. He “nations' interests”, the prime minister also says, come first. So now is the time to "collaborate", to move forward on the dossiers, from the stability pact to Tunisia, on which it is easier to find "convergence".

The Elysée speaks of convergences on common challenges, even if on Expo 2030 the paths of Rome and Paris diverge with the French focusing on Riyadh's candidacy and Giorgia Meloni appealing to other countries to keep Italian hopes high in favor of our capital.

The distances therefore remain, and the mutual distrust as well. But the two enter together into the Murat hall of the Elysée, decorated with views of Rome (the Tiber, and Trajan's column), exchange a few glances while talking, and then leave the room arm in arm to lock themselves in the bilateral study. Macron watches her carefully while Meloni makes his statements to the press before the long-awaited formal bilateral meeting. You give a sign of assent when the Prime Minister talks about the Stability Pact and even when she repeats, she does so on every occasion, that we need to find alternatives to put an end to the "slavery of the third millennium", with the fight against smugglers and collaboration with the countries of departure and transit of migrants. To guarantee, the Prime Minister likes to say, also the "right not to migrate".

The official appointment was at 17.30pm. Meloni's arrival was postponed by a quarter but this time due to delays in the meeting of the Bureau des expositions universelles, the reason that brought the prime minister to Paris. “Let's bring history into the future together”, the appeal he launches to the 179 delegates to convince them to bring Expo 2030 to Rome. An appeal that he will repeat at the embassy in the evening, with a show animated by Elisa's voice. But the game, everyone is aware, is very difficult, also because Macron has given his support to Saudi Riyadh from the beginning. Support that the Elysée confirms even after an hour and 40 minutes that the French president spent with the prime minister in the golden hall on the first floor. In which, Meloni reports, there was no mention of Expo at all.

The ceremony changes the initial program because a music festival is being set up in the honor courtyard of the presidential palace: Macron welcomes the prime minister not at the foot of the steps but in the gardens of the Elysée, then a quarter of an hour of statements to the press and a bilateral meeting which was scheduled to last an hour and instead lasts much longer.

Italian intentions want to put a stop to the clashes and misunderstandings of the first months. “It's not a new beginning,” downplays the prime minister, relationships have always been focused "on content", also because politics is not "a relationship between kids who argue and make up". And the "friendship" between Italy and France, sealed by the Quirinale Treaty, he says Macron also citing the recent visit of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, it is the one "that interests me first of all, the one that sometimes allows controversies and disagreements to be brought to life, but in an always respectful framework because it is part of a story bigger and deeper than us".

We don't go into detail about migrants but the words that the two use are similar, focused on the "defense of external borders" which is the request made by Italy.

And Macron spends words of clear appreciation on Italy's posture towards Russian aggression in Kiev –“thank you for your great clarity on Ukraine”-. And the agreement can also be found on the Stability Pact, to act as an axis against the Berlin penalty -"we agree that the parameters today are inadequate" and that "strategic investments should not be treated like others"-. The conversation, however, always remains on the big issues, there is no mention of the interests of Vivendi in Italy or even of Tav, even if the Sherpas, he assures, are working on this because it is “Proceed quickly” is essential.