President Meloni’s address at the Italy-Saudi Arabia high-level round table

Good afternoon, and thank you all for being here for this important event.

Thank you also for waiting for me, we were expecting to be here a bit before but the discussion with His Highness was very wide and very important, so it took the right time.

I want obviously to greet and thank all the representatives of the Saudi government for hosting this important event, which is dedicated, as my entire visit is, to strengthening our relations. I want to thank Vice Minister Valentini who represented the Italian government and followed the works of this Round Table, from whom I will ask for details on the discussion that you had and on the opportunities that emerged.

Thank you also for allowing me to discover this incredible building where Saudi Arabian and Italian creativity met again, centuries after our civilisations met on the same road in the place we are. So, things in history come back.

As far as I know, my intervention was not formally scheduled, but I thought it was only right to bring a brief greeting, to give credit to the wide and qualified participation in this forum, which concretely demonstrates how we are all aware that the relations between the Italian and the Saudi Arabian economic-financial systems still have very wide margins for growth.

There is a common interest in making a qualitative leap, and this is what I also want to represent  with my brief presence here, after having discussed these aspects extensively with His Highness Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

In recent years, the trend of the economic and trade relations between Italy and Saudi Arabia has certainly been positive. Italy is the seventh largest supplier to Saudi Arabia and is gradually improving its market share. In the first 10 months of 2024, Italian exports grew by more than 26 percent compared to the same period in 2023.

Data that I consider significant, and yet definitely improvable. There is enormous untapped potential in our cooperation, and my wish is that this visit may open a completely new phase in our partnership. 

It is no coincidence that we signed today our common will to elevate our bilateral relationship to the level of a strategic partnership. Because my opinion is that there is a difference between merely buying or selling something, and really cooperating. Cooperating is completely another thing, it means confronting and reasoning together, in differences, in an increasingly uncertain scenario in which being able to listen and being heard is crucial. And that’s the first step. The more frank and intense that dialogue is, the more it will naturally develop itself.

That is why we are here today, and that is what the joint declaration we signed today foresees. It declares that our two leading nations in the enlarged Mediterranean can broaden their horizons and explore together many new opportunities. And we have offered an outline of the priorities from which to start for this new phase, signing many agreements at the governmental level but also supporting the memoranda signed between public and private entities during this visit. So, thank you all for what you have been working on together. Important agreements that confirm the willingness of our ‘Sistema Italia’ (the ‘Italian System’), which is at high level represented here, to invest and work in Saudi Arabia and to ensure its contribution to the very ambitious development projects launched by the Saudi government.

There are many converging interests between our two countries, and I think our task is to find a synthesis and identify the areas where our cooperation can be stronger, more effective, deeper. And those areas are the development of strategic and economic interconnections – the Minister was referring to that and that is very important in the strategy that Italy has moreover in the wider Mediterranean – infrastructure, energy cooperation, technological innovation, the defence sector, scientific research, agribusiness, sports, entertainment, tourism – where Saudi Arabia has in my opinion huge potential -,  and enhancement of cultural and archaeological heritage, as this place perfectly shows us all.

It is no coincidence that the venue for this meeting is Al-Ula – I knew it was an extraordinary place, but I have to say that being here gives completely another sense to this feeling. It is the first Saudi site to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You know that Italy, from this point of view, is a “super-power”: the first nation in the world with 60 recognized UNESCO sites. It is a record that on the one hand makes us proud, but on the other entrusts us with a great responsibility, that we want to share with our partners, to offer our competencies, skills and know-how that can be put at the service of enhancement and protection of the sites. 

We signed agreements also in this sense, and we are also involved in giving space to another aspect of Italian creativity, through the commitment to support the creation in Riyadh of a Design Museum.

The total value of these agreements signed today and during this visit is about ten billion dollars, and this figure gives an idea of the extraordinary leap that together we have committed to in our future work together. Agreements that constitute platforms on which we can build together further opportunities, and for this aspect I want to thank all those who have devoted great effort to their successful closing. 

In this framework, and I will conclude, I am particularly pleased that we have had the opportunity to create specific agreements that lay the foundations for new joint projects not only between us, but also to share our common work abroad, and moreover in Africa, which as you know is an important focus of the Italian Government. You know we launched this ‘Mattei Plan’ which is a new model of cooperation with African nations aimed to allow African nations to better live with what the continent has, for Africa is not a poor continent, as we often [hear], it is not. It is simply a continent we have to help to better use the many resources it has, and that is something on which I think Italy and Saudi Arabia can very well work together, for what happens there is important for both of us. So, we don’t have a second agenda, as often happens with other actors, and I think that makes the difference in the way you cooperate. We are determined to strengthen this new model of cooperation that we are building, and we ask the contribution of our partners that share the same vision which is exactly the case of Saudi Arabia. 

So, I’ll try to summarise: I think what has come out of these two days is something completely new in our relationship, or I hope it is the beginning of a new era in our cooperation. For, yes, we have always had a very good cooperation but, as we both said, there is really room to do more. This is an important step forward, but the most important thing is that it is the first one. I want to be concrete in delivering next steps, so I will come back to Italy, I will speak with my Ministers who are involved in the sectors we’ve been talking about, and then I hope that we will continue signing agreements and build things on those agreements, so words don’t remain simply words, for we have lots of things to do; so, it has sense if it is concrete, and I am sure it will be. 

So, thank you all for the work you’ve been doing, thanks to the Saudi government for this warm welcome, it has been a very beautiful stay and I really consider this the beginning of something completely new. 

Thank you.