Premier Giorgia Meloni said Wednesday that the bilateral meeting she had in Rome on Tuesday with French President Emmanuel Macron was “very useful to strengthen dialogue and coordination between Italy and France in the face of growing common challenges.
“As founder nations of the European Union, we intend to work together for a more sovereign, prosperous and peace-oriented Europe, capable of protecting its citizens and its interests,” Meloni said via social media after the encounter depicted as an meeting seeking to ease recent tensions between Paris and Rome.
“We found strong convergence on the European agenda on competitiveness, on regulatory simplification, on the issue of public and private investments, on the energy transition with full technological neutrality and on the support for strategic sectors such as automotive, steel, artificial intelligence, decarbonised renewable energies as well as nuclear energy and space.
“We also reiterated our strong support for Ukraine to reach a fair and lasting solution, while promoting a strengthening of European defence.
“The meeting also allowed us to address key security issues, from the Middle East to Libya, and to coordinate positions on transatlantic relations and the EU’s economic security.
“At the end we agreed that the next bilateral summit will be held in France in early 2026 in order to further develop the already close cooperation between our two nations”.
The Italian-French partnership was boosted by the November 2021 Quirinal Treaty signed by Macron and then premier Mario Draghi, but it has more recently seen a few bumps in the road, partly due to the differing political roots of Macron and Meloni, one a liberal centrist and the other a rightwing conservative.
The meeting comes after Meloni was absent from a meeting between Macron and British, German and Polish leaders on Ukraine in Albania two weeks ago, and from an ensuing call to US President Donald Trump.
Meloni said it had been her decision and that Italy did not want any part in talks on a coalition of the willing to send troops to police peace in Kyiv, a justification Macron appeared to liken to Russian disinformation, stressing the meeting and call were about peace talks, not boots on the ground in Kyiv.
The leaders have also been at odds over how to tackle Trump’s tariffs, with Meloni, a personal and political friend of the US president, advocating accommodation and compromise to hopefully gain concessions as a “bridge” between the EU and US and Macron, who also enjoys a rapport with Trump dating back to the MAGA leader’s first term, calling for stiffer countermoves from the EU Commission.
