Tajani receives his colleague Colonna in Rome. France and Italy talk to each other again

It was there that everything stopped. And it is from there, not surprisingly, that he will start weaving his web again. Antonio Tajani will see Catherine Colonna on Thursday. The two Italian and French foreign ministers will have an interview that will sanction the new-found harmony between Rome and Paris: a significant meeting, given that a dinner between Tajani and Colonna was canceled at the behest of the Meloni government, on 4 May last, after the attacks from the French interior minister to the Italian premier. And since symbols matter, in diplomacy, the roles have now reversed. And in fact Tajani, who was supposed to fly to Paris on May 4th, will now take on the role of the landlord. It will be he, that is, who will welcome Colonna to the Farnesina with all the honors: therefore a sign of how explicit the will of the Elysee is to mend the rift.

On the other hand, the strategic dossiers in which Rome and Paris share interests are too many and too decisive not to make rapprochement necessary. Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron also discussed it during the G7. From the Stability Pact to the management of migrants, from the Sahel to Ukraine, everything induces France and Italy to seek shared solutions. Colonna’s visit to Rome on Thursday will therefore be the first step on the road to rapprochement.

• 
  

• Valerio Valentini

• Born in L’Aquila, in 1991. Grew up in Collemare, up there in the Apennines. Classical high school diploma, degree in Modern Literature at the University of Trento. Al Foglio since 2017. I wrote a book, “Gli 80 di Camporammaglia”, published by Laterza, with which I won the Campiello Opera Prima award in 2018. I like good books and good cinema. And cycling, everything, even the bad stuff.