Pedro Sánchez has requested a meeting with Giorgia Meloni on the occasion of her visit to Rome next week. The prime minister, according to La Vanguardia from sources in the Italian Government, has accepted the proposal for a meeting at the Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Executive, but for the moment the schedules do not quite match. The contacts, these same sources explain, are ongoing.
The head of the Spanish Government will be in Rome to meet the Pope, at the audience scheduled for the morning of Wednesday the 27th, before the Pontiff’s trip to Spain, but his Roman agenda also includes commitments outside the Vatican. Sánchez plans to visit the FAO, the United Nations agency for food based in the Italian capital, where the Spanish presence is significant and which last October also received a visit from Queen Letizia, special ambassador for nutrition.
In this context, according to sources from the Italian Government, Sánchez would have requested a meeting with the prime minister, who has shown herself available.
Meloni, who has on several occasions shown her personal friendship with the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, the last time during a vacation in Madrid at Christmas, tells her collaborators that she has no problem receiving Sánchez and repeats a formula she has already used on other occasions: “I talk to everyone and I tell everyone what I think.”
Bilateral tension
The latest friction between Rome and Madrid erupted over the race to lead the FAO
It is not the intention of the Italian right-wing leader, therefore, to hide the disagreements with Sánchez, with whom she has had numerous duels at a distance in recent months. In particular, the Italian prime minister, responding to the opposition that took the PSOE leader as a model for his positions on the United States and Israel, accused Spain of dividing Europe.
Although the temperature of the controversies has cooled after Meloni’s distancing from Trump, in recent weeks a new chapter of the clash between Rome and Madrid has occurred, this time over the choice of the next director general of the FAO. Italy supports former minister Maurizio Martina, while Spain backs the current Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas. The dispute even caused a letter of protest from the Italian minister Francesco Lollobrigida addressed to the rotating presidency of the European Union, in which he accuses Spain of aspiring to an excess of positions in international agencies linked to the food sector.
The only meeting at the Palazzo Chigi between Sánchez and Meloni dates back to April 5, 2023, when the Spanish president added the Roman stage to a trip that included Cyprus and Malta. On that occasion, both exchanged formal statements about Europe and the Mediterranean.
Since coming to power, Meloni has not made any official visit to Spain.
Read more The National Court establishes that companies must compensate holidays that fall on Saturday
