The French Head of State, who had not congratulated Ms. Meloni since her appointment, is the first foreign leader to exchange, in Rome, with the new head of the Italian government.
Le Monde with AFP
Emmanuel Macron and the new president of the Italian council, Giorgia Meloni, met on Sunday October 23 in Rome, a few hours after the entry into office of the most right of Italy since 1946. This meeting has took place in the center of the Italian capital, on the sidelines of the Saint’Egidio conference in which the French president participated and not in an official palace, had declared a French source to the agency France-Presse (AFP) upstream of go back.
The French Head of State, who has not congratulated M meloni since the formalization of his appointment on Saturday, unlike the German Chancellor, the American president and representatives European institutions, is therefore the first foreign leader to meet the new head of the Italian government.
Paris, however, was very careful about the possibility and even the opportunity of such a tête-à-tête, the official reason for Mr. Macron’s arrival in Rome being a speech on peace delivered on Sunday during of an international forum and an audience with Pope Francis scheduled for Monday morning. 2>
macron “quite ready to work with” meloni
The Italian political context, with the coming to power of the chef of the post-fascist party Fratelli of Italia at the head of a coalition dominated by the extreme right, prevailed over these considerations. During his previous papal audiences, in 2018 and 2021, President Macron had in fact had more or less formal interviews with Italian leaders. Franco-Italian relations, in good fixed as long as Mario Draghi directed the peninsula, risk crossing a zone of turbulence with the Eurosceptic and sovereignist M me meloni.
A taste of these tensions took place even before his appointment, when the Secretary of State for French European Affairs, Laurence Boone, warned, at the beginning of October, that France would be “very vigilant on the Respect for the values and rules of the rule of law “in Italy. “Unacceptable threat of interference”, had immediately insurgent the one who has since become the first woman to occupy the post of government chief in her country.
Emmanuel Macron tried to calm the game on Friday by ensuring being “quite ready to work with her”. Giorgia Meloni has given wages to its European partners by hammering its attachment to NATO and its determination to support Ukraine, while appointing personalities which they can judge reassuring in key posts of foreign affairs and the economy.