President Meloni’s address at Italy-Türkiye Business Forum

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for being here. There are many people in attendance, with a high level of expertise. President Erdoğan and I chose to be here with you to extend our greetings to this Business Forum, as we believe the economic, trade and industrial dimension is a key pillar of the strategic relationship between Italy and Türkiye, two nations that are allies and friends in the Euro-Mediterranean context.

Our productive and industrial fabrics are strongly interconnected and complementary: more than 400 Italian companies are present in Türkiye, employing approximately 30,000 people and generating an overall turnover of around EUR 18.5 billion. Italian companies play a decisive role in manufacturing in Turkish industrial districts, covering numerous sectors. Furthermore, our companies have been providing a significant contribution to the Turkish nation’s infrastructure development for decades. There are many major works projects which also speak Italian, showcasing Made in Italy engineering excellence. I am thinking, for example, of the third bridge across the Bosphorus Strait, which connects Europe and Asia and is the longest single-span road-rail bridge in the world. Italy is Türkiye’s largest trading partner in the Mediterranean area and its second largest trading partner in Europe, with a significant increase in trade over the last years, up from 26 billion in 2023 to the record figure of more than 32 billion dollars in 2024. Italian exports have played a decisive role in these dynamics, recording growth of approximately 28% in the last year alone, so almost 30%, and this jump forward has enabled us to meet the target of 30 billion in trade set by the Italian and Turkish governments at the last intergovernmental summit, a good five years ahead of schedule. Reaching this goal so quickly has clearly spurred us on to do even more, and better. Hence why today we have signed a joint declaration, setting the new and decisively ambitious goal of increasing trade to 40 billion dollars in the medium term.

This goal clearly requires a lot of work, but we know that, in order to achieve it, we can above all count on the dynamism of Italian and Turkish companies and their ability to create value with mutual investments. Many Italian companies are investing in Türkiye, also in terms of de-risking and reshoring, and our cooperation is growing in key sectors such as critical raw materials, aerospace, defence and pharmaceuticals.

Likewise, major Turkish companies have a growing interest in investing in Italy, as can be seen in the numerous agreements signed earlier today and during this Business Forum. This is further proof of the fact that it is crucial to keep working to create increasingly favourable conditions for those wanting to come and invest in Italy and create employment. As you know, this Government has been committed to this ever since entering office, and our work has allowed Italy to regain its effectiveness particularly in terms of its ability to gather and attract investments. Today, it is an economically and financially solid nation with political stability, and this certainly makes the difference.

The shared goal we are working towards with our Turkish partners is to strengthen the industrial autonomy of Europe and the Mediterranean, making value chains increasingly resilient to external shocks, increasingly close and increasingly secure. In this context, I believe the decision by Baykar Technologies to acquire Piaggio Aerospace is an extremely important one, creating an Italian-Turkish alliance, together with Leonardo, for the development, production and maintenance of unmanned aerial systems. This strategic agreement provides for the creation of a joint venture based in Italy, which will enable respective strengths to be leveraged and new market opportunities to be opened up, especially in Europe. 

I consider the three-year investment plan presented by Beco to revitalise the competitiveness of Italian factories and promote the extraordinary strength of Made in Italy to be equally as significant. Our Industry Ministers, whom I thank, have followed this agreement up until now, and will continue to do so very closely, also to guarantee employment levels. 

We are also boosting cooperation in the energy sector, an area in which we are already strategic partners, with particular regard to the supply of natural gas through the Trans Adriatic Pipeline. Looking forward, with the development of Turkish resources, starting with the development of the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea, which leading Italian companies such as Saipem and Tenaris have contributed to, also gas produced by Türkiye will be able to reach Italy. We will deepen our cooperation in this field in order to seize the opportunities that may arise in the future, with regard to both hydrogen and renewables.

As is the case for the energy transition, the digital transition is also based on connectivity, with data being the energy of our digital societies. This is why I also consider the agreement reached between Tim Sparkle and Turkcell, to connect Türkiye to Italy and the European telecommunications ecosystem, to be very important. This project provides for the implementation of a cutting-edge digital backbone stretching 4,000 km, which will cross the Mediterranean and improve connectivity between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

We are also consolidating our cooperation in the areas of space, infrastructure development and transport as well as in the enhancement of our rich cultural and archaeological heritages, and sport. As you know, Italy and Türkiye share the responsibility of organising the European football championship in 2032, and we well know that events of this scale also provide an opportunity to attract investments, drive development and create jobs.

Lastly, our nations already share an extremely solid basis of economic and industrial cooperation in key sectors. Our goal is to develop our cooperation towards the most strategic areas of today and tomorrow: artificial intelligence, critical materials, energy transition, advanced technologies, space exploration. We will of course do so by making the most of the strength and dynamism of our productive fabrics, which count not only major industrial leaders able to compete on a global scale, but also very many small and medium-sized enterprises, representing an extraordinary, and we could even say unique, wealth of innovation capacity and production excellence. So, obviously, all that’s left to do is get down to work.

I wish to thank President Erdoğan and his delegation once again for this important visit and for the many agreements we have reached today, enabling us to strengthen our cooperation with an important partner, an ally in the Mediterranean region and within the Atlantic Alliance. I clearly do not consider today to be an end point; I see it, as always, as a new starting point. 

Thank you, and I wish you all the best with your work.

[Courtesy translation]