Good afternoon everyone, thank you for being here.

I am very pleased to welcome Chancellor Scholz to Rome today and this meeting has come only four months after my visit to Berlin, showing the particularly intense dynamics in relations between Italy and Germany and between our governments. During this period, we have met very many times at international, multilateral fora, which are more and more frequent and this is of course a good thing, especially in the crisis situation we are all facing together.

These dynamics are supported by our closeness on many issues on the political agenda, but also by the commitment we share to address the particularly complex common challenges we are facing, to support Europe’s role in what is certainly a new context, such as the one we find ourselves in. I am certain we will find further opportunity to cooperate in view of Italy’s upcoming presidency of the G7 next year. We have done excellent work together in the G7 this year and part of that work will be taken up during the Italian Presidency.

We want to further strengthen, intensify, our bilateral dialogue, and we intend to do so also thanks to the action plan between Italy and Germany, on which we have substantially reached an agreement. We would like to formally adopt this plan at the next intergovernmental summit that will be held in Germany by the end of this year.
The aim of the action plan is to make our bilateral dialogue even more regular and intense, at a political level, at a technical level. This will allow us to work with a pragmatic approach on many issues that are of key importance for the future of our two nations – innovation, research, development, the labour market, social cohesion, ecologically sustainable growth, climate protection – both at bilateral level and with regard to coordinating our positions at European and international level.

We are particularly interested in the possibility of developing partnerships with regard to attracting skilled labour, selected in partner nations of common interest, but also to help the nations of origin to create jobs for their peoples, a prospect that our ‘Mattei Plan for Africa’ can certainly contribute to.
There is important alignment with Germany also on this front, i.e., on the need to begin new forms of cooperation, particularly with Mediterranean or North African countries, especially regarding energy. Today, Europe has an energy supply problem and, from this point of view, cooperation with African nations can address several problems together.

The complementarity between our economic systems can be seen not only from our trade volumes – over EUR 168 billion in 2022, an absolute record level for Italy – but also from the growth in flows, which have increased by EUR 50 billion in three years. Manufacturing sector competitiveness and resilience are an essential point of our respective economic policies, of our nations’ interests - another indispensable area of bilateral collaboration. I believe that also the recent industrial agreement between ITA Airways and Lufthansa testifies to how aligned our nations’ interests can be at a strategic level, on a number of major economic, but also indeed strategic, issues.

Defence cooperation is just as key: the current international context requires efforts in terms of rationalising resources, and also skills. In this area too, dialogue between our two governments and companies operating in the sector is proceeding with great continuity.    

We have also talked about European issues with Chancellor Scholz, about the various topics that will be on the agenda of the next European Council meetings especially. We are aware that open and fruitful dialogue is essential to push ahead with European solutions to the complex challenges we are facing.

From this point of view, we have spoken about immigration: Germany knows that, without Italy, the nations considered ‘border counties’, i.e., those on Europe’s maritime border, it is much more difficult to have a European migration policy that works better than the current one. We have worked within the European Council to overcome the contrast between primary movements and secondary movements, understanding that everything is linked: a change of paradigm that I believe is very important, that we have pursued and on which there is now broad consensus. I also wish to thank Chancellor Scholz for this.

If we do not address the issue of defending the European Union’s external borders, if we do not fight illegal human trafficking, distinguishing between those who have the right to protection under the Geneva Convention (subsidiary protection) and those who, on the other hand, do not have the right to that protection, then it will be much more difficult to address a number of the challenges we are facing, the revision of the Dublin agreements, which is an issue we are discussing at the moment and on which we hope we can meet halfway in order to bring together the interests of all nations.
We have spoken about Tunisia. As you know, I was in Tunisia a few days ago. I spoke with the Tunisian President and, as you also know from a statement made by President of the European Commission von der Leyen, we will be returning to Tunisia on Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, to open up at European level regarding cooperation to help a nation that is currently in difficulty, not only to govern migration flows but also because Tunisia being in significant difficulty would also mean a domino effect of further problems, for us in Italy but also for Europe as a whole. 

We have spoken about this, and we have spoken about the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact. We agree on the fact that the old rules are outdated, that we need to find new rules that take into account the necessary level of competitiveness of our systems at a time when we are being called upon to make many investments. In my view, a new stability pact is needed that strongly focuses on supporting growth because, today, Europe’s competitiveness needs to be supported also by a vision and by appropriate rules. We therefore believe that, in this respect, fiscal rules are important that are able to ensure flexibility and European support for the investments regarding Europe’s priority goals – I am thinking of the energy transition, the digital transition and also defence in the current context.

With regard to energy, we agree on the fact that it is very important to ensure diversification of our supply sources, to work on connection infrastructure, particularly in the Mediterranean (I go back to what I was saying earlier about relations with North Africa). We are working together with the European Commission on this, for example supporting the SoutH2 Corridor project which, in the future, will connect green hydrogen flows between Italy, Germany, Austria. These are therefore very important strategic challenges.

We couldn’t not talk about Ukraine. Our support for the Ukrainian cause is not in question. A few days ago, I listened to very clear words, once again, from Chancellor Scholz: I want to offer him my compliments because it is not easy for anyone in this phase, in what is a very complex context, but all those in a position of responsibility understand that defending Ukrainians’ sovereignty and freedom is a fundamental condition to defend also the freedom, sovereignty and stability of Europe as a whole, and its founding values.

We therefore guarantee our support for Ukraine for as long as necessary. We are of course also working for peace but, as I have said many times, the word ‘peace’ cannot be mistaken for the word ‘invasion’. Peace must be just and must take into consideration the requests, wishes and standpoint of the nation that has been attacked.

Thanks once again to Chancellor Scholz for this fruitful meeting we have had today and we will see each other soon; we’re always together, as we travel around for international meetings.

[Courtesy translation]