There will be no meeting between Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez. Palazzo Chigi and La Moncloa had been working for days on a meeting at the Italian Government headquarters for Tuesday afternoon, but in the end “the schedules did not match,” diplomatic sources explain, adding that there is a commitment to organize a bilateral meeting at the first European summit where both coincide.
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The Prime Minister has an audience with the Pope scheduled for Wednesday morning, but he will already be in the Italian capital from Tuesday morning to participate in an event at the FAO, the United Nations agency for food and agriculture. From there came the proposal for a meeting with Meloni, something practically unprecedented, since the only official meeting between them was Sánchez’s lightning visit to Rome in April 2023. For days, a response from the Italian side was awaited from Madrid, which was ultimately negative.
The relationship between the two is marked by persistent coldness: the huge political distance has never been softened by institutional courtesy and clashes, direct or indirect, have been frequent. The latest area of conflict is the choice of the next Director-General of the FAO, a position for which Madrid has presented the candidacy of the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas, while Rome supports the former center-left minister Maurizio Martina. According to Spanish Government sources, it is a “healthy competition,” but in Rome the dispute has generated strong tensions.
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Despite these mutual distrusts, in recent weeks Italy and Spain have coincided on some positions, such as the request for greater European flexibility in the face of the economic consequences of the war with Iran.
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