North-South Summit – President Meloni’s press statement

Thank you very much.

Good morning everyone and I really want to thank you, Petteri, for this initiative you came up with and for inviting also Italy.
I want to say that not just as a formality; I really think this initiative is very, very important and a very new way of thinking inside of the European Union.
For, as Kyriakos was saying, the four nations that are represented here (but I would say also the fifth, for Kaja was Prime Minister as well) have often been considered, and have often found themselves, on opposing sides inside of the European Union, with northern and so-called ‘frugal’ nations on the one hand and southern nations on the other that have often been accused of being, let’s say, unruly, although in recent years more out of prejudice – this is my point of view -than actual responsibility.

The fact that these nations now are here today, together, talking about how to address the major issues that we are trying to face all together, shows that we understood the world around us has completely changed, and we cannot seriously tackle some challenges we‘ve got in front of us if we don’t try to understand the point of view and the difficulties, the problems, that the others face. So, I think really this initiative was very, very precious, is very, very precious. I think we should repeat it.

We know that there are many challenges that the European Union is facing.  There are mainly two topics that Europe cannot escape from: one is the security of our citizens, which is the one we were facing in this edition, and the other one is the competitiveness of our production system (maybe this could be the idea for the next meeting).

As Petteri and Kyriakos were saying, we’ve been talking a lot about defence, about security.
Security means defence, it means that we all understand we have to do more, we all understand that it is important also to guarantee that ‘European pillar’ of NATO that for a long time we’ve been talking about during the years. NATO remains absolutely the cornerstone of our security, all the more after the accession of Finland and Sweden, and it must be able to look not only towards its eastern flank, but also towards its southern flank.
But, security means many other things. It means critical infrastructures, it means artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, it means raw materials, it means supply chains, it means a new and more effective foreign and cooperation policy, it means migration, which has been the other big topic we have been discussing.

Over the years, tackling the issue of illegal immigration solely as a solidarity-based debate was a mistake, in my opinion, as this matter is precisely a matter about security. The result is that we have been unable to defend our external borders, and we have put our internal freedom of movement at risk, and hostile players have begun using immigration as a tool for coercion, or extortion.

Today, we are committed to change course. We want to defend our external borders, and we won’t allow Russia or criminal organisations to undermine our security.
So, I think it was very important, Petteri, thank you very much. This was a very clever, very important initiative. I was proud that Italy was invited and you can always count on me and on Italy.