“Many of the European policies risk being incomplete, if not placed in a wider Mediterranean dimension”. The President of the Council, Giorgia Meloni, takes the floor at the Med Dialogues 2022 in Rome and assures that «Italy is strongly engaged with this government in strengthening its role in the Mediterranean. We face too many epochal challenges. Italy has always promoted a constructive approach». «Dialogue is important for Italy – added Meloni -. We must also tell ourselves that, if you like, Italy was a forerunner of this strategy as demonstrated very well by this Conference”.
«One of the main challenges – underlined the Prime Minister – is that of migration. The Mediterranean needs to be perceived not as a place of death caused by human traffickers”. In this context, “obviously more Europe is needed on the southern front as Italy has been claiming for some time – Meloni reiterated -: we alone cannot manage a flow of unmanageable dimensions”.
In her speech, the premier then relaunched the idea of a Mattei plan for Africa, i.e. a plan which, inspired by the figure of Enrico Mattei, «has a non-predatory posture towards other nations, but instead collaborative, respectful of respective interests, founded on a development capable of reinforcing the potential of each”.
The prime minister also addressed a message to Iranian women: “In the Mediterranean, women and young people can play a fundamental role in building more cohesive and resilient societies, and therefore it is necessary to allow them to put their vision, their energy, making them protagonists of their future, fully guaranteeing their rights. And then we cannot pretend not to see what has been happening in recent months to women and young people in Iran, who are demonstrating”.
On the sidelines of the event, the Foreign Minister also spoke on the same issue, Antonio Tajani: «On the flows decrees we are working together with the ministers of the Interior and of Agriculture to have a strategic path. We would like to have workers who arrive in our country already trained, who already have an operational destination, that is, know where they have to go to work. And then we would like to reward the countries that make agreements with us ».