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".
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