Strengthening Italy and Europe within the Natopragmatism with Donald Trumpunconditional support forUkraine and dialogue with the new Syrian leadership. These are just some of the points on the agenda Giorgia Meloni who presented them during the communications to the Chamber in view of the European Council of 19 December. The Prime Minister will be in Brussels tomorrow, where she will take part in the formal summit Weimar plus (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom and Italy) in which the Ukrainian president will also participate, Volodymyr Zelenskyinvited by the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance, Mark Rutte.
Pragmatism in the EU and with Trump
Pragmatism and concreteness are the two terms underlined by Meloni during his speech in the Montecitorio Chamber. He requests them from the EU in managing the work of the European Council, when he says that the one on the 19th “will in fact be the first of this new European legislature, the first presided over by the new president Antonio Costa who expressed to me and the other Heads of State and Government his desire to make the work more streamlined and concrete, avoiding delving into conclusions on questions of detail. It is an approach that I very much agree with, today more than ever in the face of new and more complex challenges in which there is a risk of marginalisation if not the irrelevance of Europe there is a need to focus”. And he also repeated it in relation to the relations to be maintained with the next president of the United States, Donald Trump: “It is essential to maintain a pragmatic, constructive and open approach with the new Trump administration, exploiting areas of potential and fruitful EU-US cooperation and trying to prevent commercial diatribes which certainly wouldn’t do anyone any good.” And to those who insinuate the risk of Italy’s isolation in Europe he replies: “The facts demonstrate the exact opposite”.
Unconditional support to Kiev
Ukraine is also the main dossier of the next Council and on this Meloni demonstrates continuity with the European policies to combat Russian actions and full support for the cause of Kiev until the conditions deemed sufficient by Zelensky to sit at the negotiating table are created. “In Ukraine we are working to build a just and lasting peace, based on the UN charter, this is our objective – he said – We must involve global actors to achieve a just peaceItaly will do its part.” And he ensured that the US-EU credit line from 50 billion agreed for 2025 will be paid soon thanks to the guarantees deriving from the frozen Russian assets in Europe, “an extremely complex job that led to an extremely important result, a success of the Italian presidency of G7“.
Strengthen EU defense for a European bloc in NATO
However, Ukraine, as is known, also represents an issue of internal security for the European Union and for this reason Meloni maintains that if the group of 27 has “the claim to be stronger and more autonomous it cannot ignore the common commitment to strengthen its defense finally building an EU pillar of NATOto be placed alongside the American one with equal weight and equal dignity. Our commitment to the Atlantic Alliance remains the cornerstone of our security but Europe must certainly aim to have a greater role within it”. And to do so he embraces the line according to which the time has come to think about gods eurobond for research, development and production in the armaments sector: “It is vital to rapidly progress on the path of open strategic autonomy, seek innovative solutions to guarantee adequate funds for the necessary investments, for example by starting a concrete dialogue on the possibility of issuing European bonds for defense investments, continuing to push for the exclusion of defense investments from the calculation of the deficit/GDP ratio in the Stability Pact”.
“Dialogue with Syrian jihadist rebels”
After the publication of the news about an alleged offer of support from the director ofEasy to the regime of Bashar al-Assad a few days after the fall, Meloni also addresses the Syrian issue and says he is happy for the end of the dictatorship, opening up to collaboration with the new masters of Damascus: “The fall of the Assad regime is good news, rightly celebrated by the Syrian population after more than a decade of civil war. The rebel forces that have established themselves are heterogeneous, have different backgrounds and potentially conflicting interests. There is obviously concern about the future of the nation. Italy, the only one of the G7 nations to have an open embassy in Damascus, is ready to speak with the new Syrian leadership, obviously in a context of evaluations and actions shared with European and international partners”. At the moment, the prime minister says she is optimistic about the development of the situation: “The first signs seem encouraging but maximum prudence is needed – says Meloni – Words must be followed by deeds and we will judge the new Syrian authorities on the facts. The decisive element will be the attitude towards ethnic and religious minorities. I think of Christians, who have already paid a very high price, too often the subject of persecution.”
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