President Meloni’s address at U.S. Independence Day celebrations at Villa Taverna in Rome

Good evening everyone, thank you. 

My sincere thanks to Ambassador Fertitta for the invitation.

Thank you very much, Tilman, thank you for hosting us. Thank you for the kind words you had for every one of us. Maybe we didn’t deserve them but one thing I will tell you is that we are grateful too to the President of the United States, Donald Trump, for appointing you as the American ambassador to Italy.

I of course also wish to thank Ambassador Fertitta for this welcome, but also for the extraordinary relationship we’ve built from the start. Tilman Fertitta is a friend of Italy, and not just a friend of Italy, because, like millions of other Americans, he also has Italian origins and I really think that we can do very important work together for both our nations.

I am pleased and honoured to be here this evening to celebrate Independence Day together with Ambassador Fertitta and all of you. I must confess that I have always looked with a touch of admiration upon how the American people celebrate the 4th of July, the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence – the ‘birth certificate’ of the United States. For the American people, the 4th of July is more than just a national holiday, important though that is. It is something that every U.S. citizen carries in their heart every day, embodying the American nation’s very identity and the values of equality, freedom and democracy that serve as its foundation, making it strong. Every 4th of July, Americans above all celebrate what unites them, and they do so with love and enthusiasm, feelings that bring a nation to life and make its people strong, especially when difficult times come along.

As many of you know, I am very fond of French philosopher Ernest Renan’s definition of the concept of a nation. Ernest Renan said that “a nation is a great solidarity, constituted by the sentiment of the sacrifices that its citizens have made, and of those that they feel prepared to make once more. It implies a past; but it is summed up in the present by a tangible fact – consent, the clearly expressed desire to live a common life. A nation’s existence is a daily plebiscite”. A sense of belonging and being a proud member of your community, which above all means being willing to help that community and therefore rejecting a selfish approach to life: this is the prerequisite par excellence for any nation that wants to grow and prosper.

The American people feel and celebrate this sense of belonging, especially on the 4th of July. It is not some hollow celebration; it is as if, on that day, they once again declare their love for their nation. I like to think this is what happens for Italians on 17 March, when the Italian people celebrate the path that shaped Italy through the epic Risorgimento, making it a free, sovereign and independent nation, as well as the values that unite us and the symbols that embody those values: the constitution, the national anthem, the flag. I am therefore pleased to celebrate this day with you, but I am obviously also here to reiterate how strong and solid relations are between Italy and the United States. ThFey are sister nations, united by a special relationship that grows stronger day after day and clearly owes a great deal to the more than 20 million Italian-Americans who have contributed to the prosperity of the United States for generations. With President Trump, when we saw each other at the White House but also during the other opportunities for discussion we have had over the last months, we always began by recalling this extraordinary, unique bond. We have considered this as just a starting point to discuss how to further strengthen our relationship and make that bond even stronger.

I of course shan’t bore you with the vast range of areas we have worked on, are working on, and will work on even better with the American administration, but I do want to reaffirm something that I consider important. Today, Italy and the United States speak the same language on many issues and many matters, and this is very positive, especially in the complex international context we are facing. This is certainly a good thing for our relations, which can grow and prosper further, but it is also a good thing for the strength, unity and compactness of the West, because the compactness of the West is an essential condition for addressing all the major challenges of our time. This is the case also, or perhaps all the more so, when our points of view may not be perfectly aligned, because we are historical allies and our ties are based on loyalty, mutual respect, willingness and an awareness that the strength of one is also automatically the strength of the other.

As President Ronald Reagan said during his visit to Italy in 1982, paraphrasing verses by Cicero: “ ‘Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it.’ … our two peoples have demonstrated beyond any doubt that Italy and the United States are and will be friends.”

So, God bless America! Viva l’Italia!

[Courtesy translation]