“The G20 is a success, there was a lot of curiosity around Italy”

Giorgia Meloni, Xi Jinping – Photo by Ansa Foto

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had a bilateral meeting with the Chinese Xi Jinping, at the end of the work of the G20.

As Palazzo Chigi reports, “Relations between the EU and China were also brought up in the conversation, hoping for their revival. President Meloni stressed the importance of resuming all channels of dialogue, including that on human rights”.

The Prime Minister “expressed the Italian government’s interest in promoting mutual economic interests, also with a view to increasing Italian exports to China”.

Xi and Meloni stressed that it was “necessary to collaborate for the effective management of the most serious and urgent global and regional challenges”, with “particular attention to the war in Ukraine and its consequences”. They agreed that any diplomatic initiative must be promoted to end the conflict and avoid an escalation”.

Xi Jinping, after the meeting, invited Giorgia Meloni to go to China. The Prime Minister accepted the invitation.

Meloni press conference

Shortly before the bilateral, concerning China, Giorgia Meloni replied to journalists during a press conference: “The memorandum with China? On this I prefer not to answer here because it would not be very polite towards my interlocutor who arrives later”.

Migrants, the conversation with Michel

On the issue of migrants, however, still at the press conference, Meloni said: “We also had the opportunity to discuss with the President of the European Council Charles Michel on immigration. What has happened in the past few days shows once again how the solutions identified so far are probably not the best and are not sufficient. So we thought about how to organize meetings in which we can put the different solutions on the table to try to collaborate on a subject on which it is much better to collaborate rather than discuss “.

Relations with Australia

During the meeting with the journalists, the Prime Minister also mentioned relations with Australia: “We spoke with the Australian Prime Minister, of Italian origin and very proud of his origins: you can work to grow a relationship in a dynamic economy that complements ours. A partnership can be strengthened. We talked about the war in Ukraine and also about the Indo-Pacific”.

Meloni at the G20: “A lot of curiosity around Italy”

“Italy was the protagonist of the G20, there was a lot of attention and curiosity around us, certainly also from the fact that Italy was the only nation with a female head of government, there were 4 participants out of a total of 41. On the issue of equality, our country was at the bottom, now we are at the forefront, and that is a pleasing element,” added Meloni.

Gemmato: Meloni irritated by journalist’s question

“You will forgive me if I have dealt with something else, I have not spoken to Gemmato whose positions on vaccines I know well, he too is vaccinated. When I return to Italy I will take care of it, but I didn’t come to Bali to talk about Gemmato,” replied the prime minister, irritated by a reporter’s question.

If the missile that hit Poland was Ukrainian and not Russian “it makes very little difference. The responsibility as far as we are concerned is entirely Russian,” Meloni said of the missile that hit eastern Poland.

US ready to supply more gas

“With Biden we discussed the strengthening of relations between Italy and the United States, we talked about energy and the American administration guarantees its desire to increase gas supplies. The US is ready to reason with the EU to find solutions to control prices,” said the Prime Minister.