2024 will be no less complex than 2023 says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 19 - Premier Giorgia Meloni said Tuesday that next year is set to be just as complicated as this year has been in a message to the Conference of Ambassadors at the foreign ministry in Rome.
    "The year that is about to end has been a particularly complex one at the international level," Meloni said.
    "And everything suggests that 2024 will be no different.
    "This is also why we need an increasingly strong Europe that is a lead player.
    "A global player capable of preventing strategic vacuums from being filled by others, projecting itself as a geopolitical giant, not just bureaucratic one".
    She said that, with Italy taking over the duty presidency of the G7 next year, migration will be on its agenda for the first time.
    The premier also hailed the agreement Rome recently reached with Tirana to set up Italian-run migrant centres in Albania.
    "The Italy-Albania Protocol is another part of our strategy to fight traffickers and allow only to those who have the right to international protection to enter European territory," said the message, which Meloni was unable to give in person because of flu.
    "It is an agreement that has a great European spirit, which will allow us to experiment with a virtuous model of operational cooperation between an EU state and a non-EU state, and which, not surprisingly, is also arousing real interest in other nations of the Union.
    "It is an important signal contradicting those who argued that things on the immigration-policy front could not change and that there was no space for innovative, courageous solutions".
    (ANSA).