More than four months after assuming power, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, will receive the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, in Rome. As La Vanguardia has been able to confirm, the socialist leader will meet with Meloni on April 5 at Palacio Chigi, the seat of the Italian Executive, after returning from his trip to China and another day in Cyprus and Malta, within the framework of the European tour that he is carrying out in view of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU that will begin on July 1.
Sánchez and Meloni should have already met at a summit of Mediterranean countries in Alicante in December, but the Italian finally canceled her participation due to flu. In the end, the meeting will be in the middle of Holy Week, and a few days after the 19th edition of the Italy-Spain Dialogue Forum is held this Thursday and Friday in the Italian capital, some days of rapprochement between the two countries to which some ministers of the Spanish Government and their Italian counterparts, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, or the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles.
The meeting between Meloni and Sánchez will not be an easy encounter. Meloni is not only the president of the Reformists and Conservatives in the European Parliament, of which Vox is a part, but also maintains a very close relationship with Santiago Abascal’s party, which interpreted the victory of the Brothers of Italy in the transalpine country as a political boost to their aspirations in Spain. Shortly before the fall of Mario Draghi’s government that led to the early Italian elections, Meloni traveled to Marbella for a Vox rally in which she made one of her most incendiary speeches, before beginning a process of softening her image in the face of Win the election.
Meloni and Sánchez are at ideological antipodes, but Italy and Spain currently have many common interests to defend in Europe. Beginning with the reform of the European energy market, a greater European involvement in the migration issue or in recovery funds, as they are the two main beneficiaries of the program. Today Brussels has given a wake-up call to Italy by suspending the payment of 19,000 million, a tranche of the planned aid, due to doubts about the degree of compliance with the milestones and reforms to which they are linked, although they have extended the deadline by one month evaluation. In addition, since Meloni has been in power, he has been making an effort to show his more institutional side, especially in international appointments, both in Brussels and in visits such as his last trip to Kyiv to show his support for Volodimir Zelenski.
