PARIS. They found themselves on the steps leading to the entrance to the Elysée: Emmanuel Macron, the young president, shook hands tightly on the shoulders of Sergio Mattarella, the white-haired president. Macron’s privileged interlocutor even when things were going badly between Italy and France (indeed, very badly), it is Mattarella’s first trip across the border since the pandemic broke out. “Our personal friendship strengthens relations between the two countries,” said the Italian president. And Macron: «France welcomes a friend but also an eminent personality who has all our respect».
“This is the first time I travel abroad and I am happy to be here – continued Mattarella -: France and Italy have a truly unique bond, based on shared values and visions”. And «our relationship has been strengthened with the recovery fund, a challenge to which our two countries have arrived with a common position. Indeed, if the EU became aware of the need for this tool it was also thanks to Macron ». The pandemic remained present in all talks between the two. “Italy was the first country strongly affected by Covid – underlined Macron – and the way in which you reacted to the unimaginable has impressed all of us”. However, «together we have managed to create European solidarity. The past year has been marked by a strong desire of Germany, France and Italy to build a European ambition ». “We have expressed our aspiration for a more just and greener Europe – continued the French president, with reference to today’s talks at the Elysée – and that it will give more space to European youth”.
In this regard, Macron and Mattarella have already launched a concrete project: to offer young people from the two countries the possibility of a Franco-Italian civil service. “Our administrations are ready to quickly define the modalities,” said the Italian president. The two also discussed the draft of a treaty of the Quirinale: “It must give shape to this intense relationship – explained Mattarella -: this treaty of enhanced collaboration is a natural need”. It will have to better structure the relationship between Paris and Rome, with codified mechanisms. It could be finished as early as the fall. There was also harmony between the two presidents on Libya (and this has not always been the case between Italy and France in recent years …) and together they indicated the importance of the Conference on the future of Europe, which Macron launched in May to gather information on the reforms needed to relaunch the EU, in view of the French presidency of the Union, in the first half of 2022.
Mattarella’s state visit to France also has a high symbolic value. It represents the definitive rapprochement between Italy and France after the harsh tensions that had erupted at the time of the yellow-green government, with the Lega and M5S in power. In February 2019 Luigi Di Maio, together with Alessandro Di Battista, met one of the leaders of the yellow vest movement in France, stating: “The wind of change has crossed the Alps”. France recalled its ambassador to Italy, Christian Masset, to Paris: it had never happened since the Second World War. And again, in July 2019, Matteo Salvini, the Minister of the Interior, deserted the summit on migrants in Paris, because “we do not take orders from Macron”. Here, then Mattarella was the French president’s lifeline to safeguard the relationship between the two countries. Today the two friends met once again.