Thank you Mr President, honourable Senators,

the next European Council meeting, which will be the third since the Government entered office, will discuss the priority challenges for the European Union. The challenges on the agenda were also the focus of discussions at the last special European Council meeting on 9-10 February, and include issues such as Ukraine, competitiveness, the single market, the economy, energy and migration. 

At this complex time for the international system, the European Union is being called upon to carry out what is probably the most difficult task of the last decades: to guarantee the security of our continent in the face of the threat represented by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; to protect and support our social-economic fabric against the impact of that aggression; to be prepared for the radical changes that may emerge in the global equilibrium. All this, of course, with respect and support for the values of democracy and freedom, which inspire our actions; this period in time has once again taught us to not necessarily take those values for granted. 
Europe and the entire Western world are called to address this great challenge with vision and strategy and in an effective and timely manner. Italy, which I have the honour of representing at the European Council, has all the right credentials to play a leading role in Europe, rather than a supporting one. This is precisely what we intend to do, building on our history, our geo-strategic position, the stability of our institutions and of our government, and the strength of our ideas. 
An initial test is certainly the issue of migration; our Government managed to get most of February’s special European Council meeting to be dedicated to this issue. We are facing an emergency that could become, that is becoming, structural in nature. This definition, which may appear to be an oxymoron, is actually the most realistic snapshot of the context that currently surrounds us. We are witnessing unprecedented migratory pressures along Europe’s southern maritime border, and also the eastern maritime route, albeit currently with lower numbers, is no less complicated to manage, as the tragedy in Cutro demonstrated all too well. As you know, following this tragedy, I wrote to the President of the European Commission, to the President of the European Council, to the President-in-Office of the Council of the European Union and to the other European leaders to stress that we can wait no longer. We cannot sit around, helplessly waiting for the next shipwreck to happen, which is inevitably an inherent danger with crossings organised by ruthless criminals and smugglers. 

Italy’s maritime borders are Europe’s borders, and Europe is called upon to defend those borders, because the lives and dignity of very many human beings, who are victims of despicable trafficking, are at stake, as is the security of the entire continent. 
We are facing criminal organisations that are profiting from human beings. We want to strongly counter this trafficking, as can be seen by the measures we took during the Council of Ministers meeting that we held in Cutro a few weeks ago. Stopping the departures, cooperating with the migrants’ main countries of origin and of transit, increasing the number of repatriations, making legal migration procedures more efficient, providing humanitarian protection and dedicating adequate resources to these objectives: these are the priorities we have set ourselves and that we have also brought to the table of European leaders.  
Strengthening cooperation with the migrants’ main countries of origin and of transit must therefore play a key role, with adequate financial resources for the goals that must be reached. How many times in this chamber have we recalled the European response to the migration crisis in 2015 and the extremely honourable agreement with Türkiye that resulted, regarding cooperation to curb migratory flows along the Balkan route? I believe that the same amount of attention and adequate funding must today be dedicated to countering irregular flows along the central Mediterranean route, and to creating concrete alternatives to migration in the countries of departure, in terms of education and training, employment and economic development. 

I wish to stress once again that, before any hypothetical right to migrate, all human beings have the right not to be forced to migrate in search of a better life. 
This is precisely the aspect that Europe and the Western world, in our view, have been guilty of neglecting in recent years. 
That is not all: for a long time, and this also often happened to previous governments, Italy has been reproached for not doing enough to counter what are known as secondary movements, i.e., irregular immigrants moving from one European Union Member State to another. 

During the special European Council meeting in February, we worked to turn this view around, according to a simple and logical line of reasoning: that there is only one way to stop secondary movements and that is to stop the primary movements in the first place, and therefore the irregular departures.  
This line of reasoning is finally beginning to make inroads among our partners, which is why I think now is the time to strongly push for a new way of managing external borders and especially the maritime borders, the specific nature of which has finally been recognised thanks to the Italian Government’s work and insistence. It is also thanks to these political and diplomatic efforts, acknowledged in the conclusions of the last European Council meeting, that the European Commission has presented a new multi-year plan to manage external borders, with particular attention being paid precisely to the Central Mediterranean. This plan contains important affirmations, which were probably unthinkable up until a few months ago, that are expressed in a Communication and Recommendation. 

The aim of the Communication is to ensure a strengthened framework of surveillance and control of the European Union’s external borders through a full and efficient deployment of Frontex’s operational resources. I believe this is a choice that can be shared and that finally discredits attempts by a number of European political groups to weaken and distort Frontex’s mandate.  For the first time, the plan also fully includes the principle of involving the flag states of NGO ships in SAR operations, which can no longer, and must no longer, be a burden only on the port states. The flag states that finance non-governmental organisations must accept the responsibilities that the law of the sea attributes to them. 
The aim of the Recommendation, on the other hand, is to have, in the shortest time possible, mutual recognition of deportation measures for irregular migrants among the 27 Member States, so that an order to leave issued by the Italian authorities is also recognised as valid in other EU Member States and vice versa. 
This approach, combined with the strengthening of Frontex’s role in supporting EU Member States, aims to finally make repatriation procedures for irregular migrants effective. We have firmly raised this issue and this is something that the Italian Government cares a lot about. These are certainly all steps that go in the right direction, showing a change in the paradigm compared with the narrative we have known until now. However, I wish to say that we still cannot say that we are satisfied. At the next European Council meeting, the Swedish Presidency and the European Commission will present a progress report regarding the measures decided upon five weeks ago, including some of those that I have mentioned. During that meeting, Italy shall stress that there is not a minute to lose. Now is the time to act. It is time to turn the solutions that the European Council has worked on and agreed into concrete facts. We intend to keep a close eye on this process to ensure it is effective, rapid and incisive, because we no longer want to mourn innocent victims in the Mediterranean, because we no longer want to accept that it is the smugglers and the mafia groups managing them that select the people who enter Italy and Europe, because we want legal, regulated migration that is compatible and because mass illegal migration penalises above all those who actually have the right to international protection as they really are escaping war and violence, and who often do not find help because the immigration quotas available are taken up by those who arrive illegally. 
In the face of this emergency, I am certain that the majority of Italians are with me, and I hope to also have the widest representation possible of political parties with me, including among the opposition. Honourable colleagues, those who have credible ideas can effectively fight their political battle without having to depict their opponents like monsters. Even during the most fierce political debates, in my view there is a line that must never be crossed; a line that, if crossed to attack an adversary, puts the whole nation in a bad light, going so far as to cast a shadow on the men and women of our coastguard, on our public security forces, whom instead we must thank because Italy is carrying a burden and a responsibility alone that should also be shared by others. This ends up even harming Italy’s negotiating power around international tables. I am saying this as someone who has never failed to use strong words or to oppose the governments before me in an outspoken way. Colleagues, by all means fiercely criticise the government, fiercely criticise me and the choices we make, the measures we introduce and any failings on our side, but please: stop for a second before you harm Italy, because this makes the difference.

In this regard, and to conclude on the matter of migration before moving on to geopolitics, over the last few weeks I have seen a lot of controversy on various fronts, including a number of reprimands that have been made and attention that has been spoken about, regarding the role that the conflict in Ukraine may play in destabilising also the African continent. Instead, I believe that such assessments require focus and attention, because we have already seen that migratory flows have at times been used for geopolitical blackmail (I am thinking of what happened on the border between Poland and Belarus just a few weeks before the aggression against Ukraine). 
I therefore believe that the specific geopolitical situation we find ourselves in requires a very thorough approach to the issues we are following. As is the case for migration, the unity of the European Union is, in my view, just as essential in the face of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. 
As I have already reiterated on several occasions, Ukrainians are not just defending their country; they are also defending the values of freedom and democracy on which our civilisation is based, on which the European project itself is based. They are defending the very foundations of international law, without which we would replace the force of law with the law of the strongest, which wouldn’t exactly be good for us either. 
A few days after the last European Council meeting, as you know, I saw Italy’s full support for Ukraine and its people firsthand when I visited Kyiv, in line with the commitment by the European Union, NATO and other nearby and related countries. This support will be assured in all areas: political, humanitarian, civil and military support for as long as necessary, in coordination with our partners and our allies. We will continue regardless of the short-term impact these choices may have on mine and the Government’s popularity and consensus or that of the other political parties in the majority. We will continue simply because it is the right thing to do, in terms of both values and defending our national interest. 
Providing military aid to Ukraine is necessary to ensure that a nation under attack can legitimately defend itself in line with the United Nations charter. 
We have formalised a sixth aid package with measures that strengthen above all air defences. This means protecting the lives of civilians, it means providing protection against the indiscriminate bombings that attack vital infrastructure for the population in the hope of making the Ukrainian people surrender after being deprived of water, electricity and heating. 
In this context, I wish to frankly say that I consider the propaganda by those claiming that Italy is spending money to send arms to Ukraine instead of spending it for the many needs of our fellow Italians to be childish. This is not true, and everyone in this room knows it. 

Italy is sending material and components to Ukraine that are already in its possession and that, luckily, we do not need to use. We are also sending them to the Ukrainians to prevent the possibility of having to use them ourselves one day. We are sending arms to Ukraine also to keep the war far away from the rest of Europe and from our home. 
So, telling Italians that if we didn’t supply arms to Ukraine then we could increase pensions or cut taxes is a lie; I intend to call this by its name. 
I shall say more: as you know, this Government is used to doing everything that it considers right to defend Italy’s national interest and we have never tried to hide that we want to increase military spending, not even when we were in the opposition (as far as Fratelli d’Italia is concerned), as indeed the previous governments did somewhat secretly, without having the courage to stand up and be counted. 
We believe on the other hand that it is necessary to stand up and be counted on these issues, and we are not afraid to say that respecting the commitments undertaken is vital for our international credibility and for our own national sovereignty, because quite simply freedom has a price and, if you are not able to defend yourself, someone else will do it for you, but won’t do it for free, imposing their interests even to the detriment of yours, and I don’t believe this has ever been a good deal for anyone. 
With regard to geopolitical and diplomatic matters, in our view the pressure being put on Moscow is essential to ensure respect for international law and, even more so, to create the best conditions possible to begin a negotiation process and reach a just peace. So far, the conditions have not been ripe for this, but we must continue to pursue them with tenacity, as we are doing every day. 
Russia’s aggression has also had repercussions on global food security, contributing to fragility in the Mediterranean and Africa, and therefore also to illegal migratory flows. I therefore wish to reaffirm that we support the agreement on the export of grain in the Black Sea, which has just been renewed. We believe the issue of Ukraine’s future reconstruction is also key; in this regard, I believe that the ‘Italian system’ is ready to make its contribution. We are also working towards this objective through the conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction, which we will be hosting here in Rome on 26 April. 
The situation we are experiencing is of course also having a very strong impact on economic issues, which will be addressed at the European Council meeting on Thursday and Friday this week. The objective of strengthening the competitiveness and productivity of the European economy remains key, in close connection with the dual transition (the digital transition and the environmental transition). I wish to say something to try and once again be clear on this latter issue: in this international geopolitical context, there are no simple solutions. As far as we are concerned, steps towards a green economy have to be sustainable from a social and economic point of view. This is why we object to proposals such as the regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from cars or the review of the directive on the energy efficiency of buildings, because the way these have been designed penalises our citizens and businesses and risks exposing us to new strategic dependencies, at the very time that our efforts to free ourselves from the dependence on Russian gas are succeeding. 
With regard to dependencies, over the last few days, the European Commission has presented a detailed and ambitions plan regarding critical raw materials, which aims to reduce Europe’s dependency, on China in particular, by diversifying suppliers and relaunching our own mining capacity. Presenting the plan, Commissioner Breton stated that, in Europe, we have 30-40% of almost all the minerals needed for our domestic requirements and that the time has clearly come to provide the means to extract them and no longer accept that Europe does nothing but consume, leaving the production to others. I agree with each and every one of these words. I shan’t dwell on the European Union’s delay in approaching this matter after decades of denying this vision, ending up with new dependencies, the price for which we risk paying now and in the coming months, and nor shall I dwell on the fact that we are finally getting to this solution after years of those who underlined this necessity being defined, at best, as ‘autarkic’. 

I instead wish to say that the Italian Government is ready to do its part; it is absolutely convinced that it must do its part and that, also in this case, such an ambitious plan requires a clear and coherent financial and political framework. On a financial level, also in this case it is necessary to understand how to finance these measures, with instruments that must not be limited only to greater flexibility regarding state aid, while on a political level this ambition calls into question the time frames and procedures for our dual transition: the more this speeds up, with targets that are often difficult to achieve, without the necessary diversification of supplies, the more our dependency will grow on suppliers that today have almost a monopoly over the necessary resources for our transition. 
Raising these problems, as we are trying do in these weeks regarding a number of important issues with the green deal, certainly does not mean giving up on environmental sustainability objectives; this instead means making those objectives compatible with economic and social sustainability on the one hand, and with full political and economic sovereignty on the other. 
In this context, the European Union’s commercial strategy must also take concepts such as nearshoring and friendshoring into due consideration, i.e., relocating production to nearby countries or friendly countries. It is essential to maintain a broad-based approach and full European support to ensure a level playing field and full functioning of the single market. This priority is all the more valid given also the new temporary framework for state aid, which must not create disparity and must only allow for limited and temporary aid. 

Completion of the capital markets union forms an integral part of our common response. An integrated European capital market is fundamental to facilitate private investment and bridge the gaps in financing for the green transition and digital transition. Thanks also to the impetus provided by Italy, the conclusions of the last European Council meeting recognised the importance of flexibility regarding existing European funds. Also in this regard, it is essential to maintain political focus on concrete implementation of these priorities, all the more so because there is still not agreement among the 27 Member States on a long-term strategy for European financial support for competitiveness in the form of a European sovereignty fund aimed at supporting strategic investments, which Italy also strongly supports.
The necessary flexibility in using existing funds, including the NRRP [National Recovery and Resilience Plan], goes together with the other major issue on the table today, which is decisive for Italy: the review of the Stability and Growth Pact.  There is still work to be done to finalise this review, but we believe it is fundamental to have new rules by the end of 2023 in order to have credible and realistic principles that are in line with the post-Covid situation. Stability and growth finally deserve to be effectively balanced. In the past, we had a Stability and Growth Pact that paid much more attention to stability; today we need attention to growth. This must be our priority. Today, the old rules would be completely unrealistic, and the new ones must instead effectively support the considerable public investments that are necessary in all strategic sectors in the coming years, including the environment, defence and digitalisation. The time for austerity is over and the process to rebalance the public budgets of the most indebted states must not sacrifice economic development, not only to avoid further affecting households and businesses but also because stable and lasting economic growth is also the only true guarantee of public debt sustainability. 
The European Council will also address the issue of energy security once again, with the main objective of assessing the effectiveness of the actions taken so far and checking how prepared we are for next winter. Right from the beginning, Italy has stressed the importance of a response by all 27 Member States, with common instruments and goals aimed at strengthening the energy system as a whole: diversifying supplies, particularly of natural gas; the fight against speculation and a dysfunctional gas market, with the aim of bringing prices back to reasonable levels for European households and businesses; reducing demand for energy; speeding up the development and dissemination of renewables; the rapid filling of storage facilities.  
The European Union’s decision to set a gas price cap , which Italy worked on and pursued a lot, put a stop to the speculation we had seen in previous months, with an enormous benefit for Italian and European households and businesses. This is largely thanks to Italy that, for a change, was able to comprehensively work together, and I believe we must all be proud of ourselves for this. 
The conclusions of the European Council meeting will also include a reference to Europe’s efforts for the people of Türkiye and Syria who have been affected by the recent earthquake. As you know, Italy responded quickly, sending search and rescue teams from the Civil Protection department and fire brigade as well as goods and financial contributions. We also took part in yesterday’s donors’ conference offering sympathy and solidarity with both the Turkish and the Syrian people. Also on this, we will continue to do our job. 
In conclusion, colleagues, Italy’s voice in Europe is strong and will keep getting stronger. This is the mandate we have received from citizens and this is the mandate we intend to pursue over the next five years. Italy wants to go back to being a leading nation in the European context, also to play its part in strengthening and improving the common European home. 
This is what I intend to represent at the European Council meeting, of course with the support of the Italian Parliament and with the mandate you will give us today.

Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]