Macron proposes peace with Meloni: “We must help Italy with migrants”

The soothing message arrives in the evening: “There is above all a need to cooperate for common borders, because I do not underestimate that Italy is the country of first arrival: it undergoes strong pressure and cannot be left alone”. Emmanuel Macron speaks from Reykjavík where the Council of Europe was held. He turns to Italy, to the Meloni government. He tries to thaw the Rome-Paris axis, after weeks-months-of tensions and mutual accusations. “We have to build common solutions”, added the French president speaking on Tg3.

A relationship, that between France and Italy, which in recent days had become even more difficult with the attacks against Giorgia Meloni by Stéphane Séjourné, head of Emmanuel Macron’s party, Renaissance. And even earlier by the French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, who had defined the premier “incapable of solving migration problems” and her “government” inhumane”. Words that had triggered a diplomatic crisis, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani who had canceled his French visit.

And if perhaps it is still too early to talk about a newfound understanding, yesterday signals at least a rapprochement. How strong, we’ll see. But in the meantime Italian diplomatic sources speak of “climate of great cordiality in Iceland” between the French president and the Italian leader, who greeted each other – the same sources tell us – before the Council of Europe. A meeting with Macron? “I’ll be able to see everyone, from here I’m going straight to Japan for the G7. These are long days in which we’ll all talk to everyone. I’ve already replied on this, it’s a matter that doesn’t particularly interest me”, Meloni said upon his arrival at the European summit, avoiding any controversy. “I am interested in the issues that in this phase the international community must have the strength to face and reiterate without hesitation. The rest are internal political issues and we leave them to internal politics”, Macron did the rest.

The Prime Minister also spoke with the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other heads of state and government, also conversing with Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Ukrainian Prime Minister Shmyhal, who a few weeks ago attended the Rome conference on the reconstruction of Kyiv.
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“We will do our part to guarantee Ukraine the future of freedom, integrity, democracy it deserves, the European future it deserves”, Meloni said later in his speech, adding that “this is why Italy has, among the other things, immediately adhered to the agreement promoted by the Council of Europe to establish the Register of damage caused by war, so that there is no impunity”.