Meloni and Macron, greetings at the Reykjavik summit: “Great cordiality”

Before starting the works, Meloni also held a conversation with the British prime minister
Altarthe German chancellor
Scholz and other leaders, also conversing with the cardinal
Peter Parolino and the Prime Minister of Ukraine
Shmyhal.

After several offensives by French ministers and leaders of Macron’s party, it is the head of the Elysée himself who creates the conditions to lower tensions in the relationship between Paris and Rome, to levels of danger since last winter due to the clashes over the migrant dossier. He does so by arriving at the Council of Europe summit shortly after Giorgia Meloni, who in recent days has not broken down in front of the blows that have arrived from beyond the Alps, but certainly has not hidden her irritation.

The next meetings between Meloni and Macron After the summit in Iceland, the two leaders will also meet over the weekend at the G7 meeting in Hiroshima. Two appointments dedicated above all to the Ukrainian crisis, in which there is also great expectation for a new face-to-face between Macron and Meloni. “These are long days in which we will all talk to everyone. But I repeat, it is a matter that does not interest me particularly”, cuts the prime minister short, who continues to relegate the French attacks to “matters of internal politics”. Or an “internal settlement of accounts”, as he defined it in recent days, linked to problems of consensus in the Macron government, from which repeated parallels arise between the leader of the Brothers of Italy and the sovereignist Marine Le Pen.

Voltages exceeded? I hope to be able to cooperate with the Italian government”, the wish of Macron, who admits that he “does not underestimate the fact that Italy is a country of first destination” and hopes for “common solutions” and “European solidarity”. Concepts on which Meloni often insisted, who now expects a change of pace from the European Commission with the Council at the end of June, with still uncertain outcomes. It will be necessary to negotiate between nuances and interests that do not always correspond. A face-to-face could help. The last, the March 23 in Brussels, had arrived after the tensions that arose when a month earlier Macron had invited Volodymyr Zelensky and Olaf Scholz to Paris, on the eve of a European Council.Even earlier, on January 17, there had been a phone call between the tenants of Palazzo Chigi and Eliseo became necessary after two months of fibrillation, between the transalpine coldness on the new center-right government and the Ocean Viking crisis.

A scenario that has changed little, as demonstrated by the latest sorties in Paris in recent weeks, such as that of the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, who called Meloni “unable to solve migration problems”. Not to mention the attack, in some ways more indigestible for the Italian front because it is considered more political, by Stéphane Séjourné, head of the Renaissance party and Macron’s lieutenant in Europe, who branded the Italian premier’s immigration policy as “unjust, inhumane and ineffective”. Episodes that we now expect to overcome with a third meeting of the thaw between the French president and the premier. Also because, in addition to that of migrants, there is another delicate dossier on which we will be discussing in the coming months:
the new Stability Pacton which Rome and Paris have convergent “yes” interests this time.