Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will be one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Budapest Demographic Summit in mid-September, Hungarian President Katalin Novák announced on her Facebook page on Tuesday.
The event, officially known as the Budapest Demographic Summit, will be held for the fifth time between 14-16 September and is one of Hungary’s biggest international conferences, Novák said in her post, EURACTIV’s partner Telex reported.
The Budapest Demographic Summit is a global conference focusing on issues related to demography, population trends and related policies. The first Budapest Demographic Summit was held in 2015 and was organised by the Hungarian government in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other international organisations.
Meloni is one of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s main allies in Europe. When she was elected Italy’s prime minister, he congratulated her, praising “A more than deserved victory” and, when the new Italian government was inaugurated, the Hungarian Prime Minister tweeted that it was “a great day for the European right.”
Despite this, there has so far been no visible cooperation between the leaders of both countries, who have markedly different views on the war between Russia and Ukraine, with Orban being critical of it while Meloni is aligned with most EU countries’ support for Kyiv.
In fact, Meloni’s participation in the Demographic Summit is presented by her team as a sign of her good relationship with Hungarian President Novak, rather than Orban.
“The friendly relationship between Novak and Meloni is well known, as is the centrality that the Italian government attributes to demographic policies,” Carlo Fidanza, head of the delegation of Fratelli d’Italia- Ecr to the European Parliament told EURACTIV.
“The prime minister’s participation in this important event in Budapest should obviously be read in this direction, as further confirmation of a commitment reiterated by our prime minister also in view of the next budget law,” he added.
(Charles Szumski | Federica Pascale with Telex.hu)
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