Lhe President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni, and the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, get along wonderfully and do not miss an opportunity to show it. Saturday December 16, in Rome, their diplomatic idyll should mark a new stage. The conservative prime minister is due to meet his Italian counterpart there before speaking at the annual party of Fratelli D’Italia, Ms.me Meloni, whose entrepreneur Elon Musk is the other distinguished guest.
The Roman meeting of the two heads of government concludes a year marked by the strengthening of relations between Italy and the United Kingdom, punctuated by demonstrative bilateral contacts on the sidelines of international summits and warm expressions of good understanding.
In April, Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak concluded in London a memorandum of understanding on bilateral cooperation presented by the president of the council, fluent in English, as a ” new start ” in relations between the two countries. The very broad text covers migration issues, the climate, police and judicial cooperation, innovation and even international security and the defense sector.
His signature came when Italy had already become, in February, the first state of the European Union to conclude a partnership on exports and investments with the United Kingdom since Brexit. London and Rome are also involved with Japan in the joint development program, by 2035, of a new generation supersonic combat aircraft, governed by a treaty signed Thursday in Tokyo. Another sign of rapprochement, Mme Meloni was the only leader of a G7 country to have gone to Bletchley Park, northwest of London, at the beginning of November for the summit on the risks associated with artificial intelligence, wanted by Rishi Sunak.
Bilateral connections
For the British leader, the construction of special relations with Italy corresponds to a strategy of bilateral rapprochements made necessary by Brexit. This logic is preferred to a rapprochement with European institutions, which does not interest the British leader, an early Brexiteer, despite normalization with Brussels.
At the heart of the new relationship between the United Kingdom and Italy is, above all, the same restrictive approach to migration issues, on the subject of which their diplomacies are preparing a future strategic partnership, provided for by the April memorandum of understanding. . On the Italian side, Giorgia Meloni promised her electorate to put an end to the arrivals of migrants on the central Mediterranean route, which recorded a sharp increase in 2023. Arriving in power like her in October 2022, the British Prime Minister made even about the Channel crossings from the beaches of Pas-de-Calais, which have also reached a historic level.
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