Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was welcomed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Sunday, a meeting that appears to have laid the groundwork for an upcoming agreement between Italy and Turkey to curb the arrival of migrants from Libya.
During the conversation, which lasted over two hours, the two leaders discussed strengthening cooperation on migration, where last year’s collaboration led to a 56% reduction in irregular flows along the Italy-Turkey corridor.
Meloni’s trip is an opportunity “to confirm the strategic nature of the partnership, at a bilateral level, in the NATO framework and the Mediterranean basin” with Turkey, Italian diplomatic sources said.
Cooperation in this area, Italian sources explained, will also be increasingly closer concerning Libya, where the respective foreign ministries intend to agree soon.
Meloni, who took over the G7 presidency on 1 January, thanked Erdogan for his diplomatic mediation efforts between Ukraine and Russia and, in particular, for the reactivation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative to unblock the shipment of grain from Ukrainian ports after Russia failed to renew the agreement last July.
Given the upcoming Italy-Africa summit to be held in Rome, development and security on the African continent were among the topics discussed. The Turkish president is not expected to attend the summit organised by Meloni, who is working to boost his Mattei Plan for Africa, based on a ‘non-predatory’ approach of mutual benefit for Africa and Europe, mainly on energy.
Italian sources explained that trade between Italy and Turkey has exceeded €25 billion and is approaching the shared goal of at least €30 billion in 2030. Economic opportunities for Italian companies were also examined during the meeting, particularly in the defence sector.
However, concerning Turkey’s EU accession process, which Meloni was always against before becoming prime minister, there seems to have been only ‘an exchange of ideas’.
In a speech in April 2021, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia called for Turkey’s status as an EU candidate country to be permanently revoked.
“In recent years, Erdogan has intensified Turkey’s involution in an Islamist direction, reducing the spaces of freedom (…) We cannot accept that Turkey finances political Islam in Europe”, Meloni said in a heartfelt appeal to then-premier Mario Draghi.
(Federica Pascale | Euractiv.it)
Read more with Euractiv
Knives out in German right as new party emergesThe WerteUnion (Union of Values), a group of mainly members of the centre-right CDU (EPP), voted on Saturday to defect and create a new party as the battle for right-wing voters in Germany intensifies amid public anger over the rise of right-wing extremism.
Source: euractiv.com
