"I don't regret having been very close to President Trump at the beginning of his second term. Because doing so meant defending the national interest." This was stated by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Bruno Vespa's book "History of the Second Republic. From Berlusconi to Meloni, from Prodi to Schlein", released on Monday 2 November by Mondadori-Rai libri.
"I also had a good relationship with Joe Biden and I was also criticized for this. Even more so - she explains in an excerpt of the book of which a preview was provided - it was natural to work to build an even closer relationship with the United States once Donald Trump was elected. The United States is our most important geopolitical and military ally, the main non-European market for our products, it hosts a very large and hard-working community of Italians, and much more".
Meloni underlines that "that closeness was really useful and also much appreciated by many European governments because it helped to keep the Euro-Atlantic dialogue open even in moments of greatest incomprehension and also to bring complex problems such as Greenland and the security of the Arctic back into the right context, that of NATO. All things useful for Italy, Europe and the West. All things - I conclude - that I claim and would do again".
This morning the Prime Minister spoke in a video message at the South Calls North convention of Cateno De Luca and Mayors of Italy.
"I thank you for choosing to put your experience, your contribution, your determination, and I would also say a certain amount of stubbornness knowing the character of Cateno De Luca in particular, at the service of a larger project".
"We have faced the challenge" of government "by radically changing the paradigm, we have put an end to the season of welfare" and "at the same time we have not left anyone behind, we have actually increased protection to protect those who were not in a position to work". And the "data tell us that the path taken is the right one. In recent years the South has grown more than the rest of Italy, it has recorded a historic record of employment exceeding the 50% threshold for the first time, it is a result resulting from the dynamism and ambition of businesses and workers in the South, but it is also the result of measures which have supported that dynamism, which have supported that ambition, as was the single SEZ".
The objective, continued the Prime Minister, is the construction of "a new model of social cohesion. I think that this is ultimately the social reason for your commitment and South Calls North. Because the South would be nothing without the North but the North would be nothing without the South and you know this better than me. So our task is to make all the territories grow in the same way by bridging the historical gaps".
"We must guarantee the new generations - continued the Prime Minister some of the measures in the maneuver - the right to be able to stay or return to where they were born, to build the budget there that the Council of Ministers approved yesterday. I'll tell you briefly some things that are in it, because you will see many of these measures arrive directly in your municipalities".
In the video message Meloni then spoke of "our exceptional agri-food productions, guardians of local traditions that make good food and general well-being one of the distinctive features of our Made in Italy, a wealth that we will always defend and at every level". "We have done it in Europe - remarked the Prime Minister - where we thwarted the cuts proposed by Brussels to the common agricultural policy and we will continue to do so. We are not willing to accept that the next European budget reduces agriculture and fishing but we are also not willing to accept that it reduces cohesion policy because there cannot be true competitiveness if we leave someone behind. All the territories must grow together. To this we must add a double investment that both you and I consider fundamental, which is that in young people and in internal areas".
