France-Italy, it’s a thaw: Macron reaches out to Meloni on migrants

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“Italy cannot be left alone in the face of the pressure” of migratory flows, “we will discuss with Meloni, I hope to be able to cooperate with his government”. After several offensives by French ministers and leaders of Emmanuel 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 high levels since last winter due to the clashes over the migrant dossier. He does so by arriving at the Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik, shortly after Giorgia Meloni, who in recent days has not broken down in front of the blows arriving from beyond the Alps, but certainly has not hidden her irritation.

In the congress center overlooking the Greenland Sea, Macron greeted the premier before the start of the summit “in an atmosphere of great cordiality”, Italian sources explain. 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, who meanwhile, on the sidelines of the summit, spoke with the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other heads of state and government, also speaking with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. «They are long days in which we will all talk to everyone. But I repeat, it’s a matter that doesn’t particularly interest me», the premier cuts short, who continues to relegate the French attacks to «matters of internal politics». Or an “internal settlement of accounts”, as you have defined it in recent days, linked to problems of consensus in the Macron government, from which repeated parallels arise between the leader of FdI and the sovereign Marine Le Pen.

Meloni now expects a change of pace from the European Commission with the Council at the end of June, with still uncertain outcomes. He will need to negotiate between nuances and interests that do not always correspond. A face-to-face might help. The latest, on March 23 in Brussels, had come after the tensions that arose when Macron had invited Volodymyr Zelensky and Olaf Scholz to Paris a month earlier, on the eve of a European Council. Meanwhile, the Italian premier, Meloni, has left Reykjavik and is headed to Japan for the G7 meeting scheduled in Hiroshima.