President Meloni’s address to the plenary session at the Ukraine Recovery Conference

Good morning everyone.

Dear colleagues, thank you for being here. Dear President Zelensky, dear Olena, thank you for being here. It’s an honour, it’s a pleasure. Allow me, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, already did, to speak this morning in my mother tongue, for we are in Rome.

It is an honour for me to open the working sessions of the fourth edition of the Ukraine Recovery Conference and to welcome to Rome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and First Lady Olena, the President of the European Commission, the President of the European Council, the Presidents, the Prime Ministers and the many colleagues who have come here today to participate in this important initiative, as well as all the delegations present.

I want to thank them because the impressive figures for this conference – 70 nations represented, more than 40 international organisations, thousands of companies and civil society organisations – convey better than any other initiative what future we all see for Ukraine and how strongly we believe in that future.

The view from this stage for those who have the opportunity to see it is extremely impactful and, for this, I of course wish to thank again the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, everyone at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and all those who have worked hard for the success of this event. I would also like to greet and thank the other Italian Government Ministers in attendance, President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa and the heads of government of the nations that had the responsibility of organising this conference before us and those we will be handing this over to.

Such extensive and high-level participation sends out an extremely important message to the world. It says that each of us is here to do our part towards a common goal, which is to look beyond the unbearable injustice that has been inflicted upon the Ukrainian people for more than three years, and to envisage, now, a rebuilt, free and prosperous Ukraine. It also says that we intend to achieve this goal not only by helping Ukraine to defend itself, making every effort to achieve peace, as indeed we are doing, but also and above all by envisaging what comes next, asking ourselves how to rebuild what has been destroyed: roads, bridges, schools, churches, hospitals. 

This is the message we want to firmly reiterate today.

Russia is increasing its attacks against civilians and is hitting infrastructure that is crucial for the population, because its plan has been the same since the beginning of the war: to attempt to make the Ukrainians surrender with darkness, cold, hunger, fear. 

This plan, like others, has failed. It has firstly failed because, as everyone has learned, the Ukrainians are much more tenacious than anyone could have expected, and it has failed because the international community has taken a stand against this destruction, providing the urgent assistance needed to ensure the continuity of basic services. I think we will need to take this into account in the future; we will need to take into account who did everything they could to prevent these atrocities and who, instead, did not. This is why, as is also stated in the G7 Finance Ministers’ statement, we also want to work with Ukraine to prevent entities that have helped finance Russia’s war machine from benefiting from the reconstruction. We have just seen a very moving video, and the narrator said “We believe that together we can stop the darkness and build a strong future”. This is precisely what we intend to do. Stop the darkness. Build a strong future. A future befitting a nation as proud as Ukraine. A nation that, despite the bombs, despite the attacks on strategic infrastructure, despite the displaced persons, the victims, the children torn away from their families, continues to have a vibrant and resilient economy.

War often erodes people’s confidence in the future; we have seen this many times in the past. In this case, it hasn’t been so. In this case, the Ukrainian people looked their enemy straight in the eye and chose to fight. And they did not choose to fight because they love conflict; they chose to fight because they love what they are defending, because they are able to see beyond that conflict. This has enabled Ukraine to go on living, producing, innovating and searching for light even in the most profound darkness. Our task is to help Ukraine write this new chapter in its history, and we will do so, for the sake of justice and as a warning for the future.

For this reason, Italy intends to play a leading role on this, and is able to do so, not only thanks to the consistency and clarity with which it has stood on the right side of history since the very beginning, without ever wavering, but also because its solid and extraordinary productive fabric has what it takes to generate a multiplier-effect when it comes to investments and opportunities. For the challenge we are facing certainly demands the utmost efforts from nations and governments as well as multilateral and financial institutions, but it is also a challenge we can only overcome if we are able to count on a robust mobilisation of private capital and the entrepreneurial spirit of businesses and their ability to attract investments.

The enthusiasm and dynamism our companies have shown, and are continuing to show, and their world-renowned genius and creativity, tell us that the ‘Sistema Italia’ can make the difference. This commitment is taking concrete form today in the agreements that some of our leading companies – Leonardo, Enel, TERNA, SNAM, Ferrovie, to name just a few – will be signing with their equivalent companies in Ukraine. We are talking about concrete initiatives focusing on strategic projects that are able to shape real change by demonstrating our production system’s collective commitment, a commitment that moves in parallel to the one put in place by the Government and institutions at various levels. This conference provides us with the opportunity to sign numerous agreements.

One of the main areas on which we wanted to focus our attention regards the creation of new instruments and new financial mechanisms that can support companies’ work and act as a multiplier. I am therefore pleased to announce Italy’s decisive contribution to the creation of a new equity fund at European level. The message we want to send out to entrepreneurs today is simple: don’t be afraid to invest, build and rebuild in Ukraine, because investing in Ukraine’s reconstruction is not a gamble, but rather an investment in a nation that has shown more resilience than any other, as well as an investment in peace, in the economic growth of Europe as a whole and in the security of our citizens.

And know that we will be by your side, together with financial institutions and organisations such as SACE, SIMEST and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti that support companies’ internationalisation, in order to put you in the best possible position to be able to operate, not only in terms of the insurance investors need against the risks deriving from the conflict, but also to explore new opportunities in strategic areas, from the agro-food industry to advanced mechanics, the chemical industry and transport. Investing in Ukraine means investing in ourselves because, like it or not, what happens in Ukraine regards each and every one of us. This is why I think we should be proud of the result we are all achieving together today – nations, international organisations, financial institutions, local authorities, the business sector and civil society. With today’s conference, we have together undertaken commitments worth over EUR 10 billion.

However, to rebuild a war-torn nation, money, engineers, architects and workers are not enough. Something more is needed, and that something is the feeling that the Ukrainian people, more than anyone else, have shown they know: love of country, the love of freedom and the desire to guarantee a future of prosperity and well-being for their children. Without love of country, everything we do loses meaning. It is no coincidence that Italy has chosen to take care of a number of symbols and places that make up the mosaic of the Ukrainian nation’s identity. That place is Odesa and the symbols are the Transfiguration Cathedral, the Philharmonic, the Museum of Fine Arts – gems of a wonderful cultural heritage that belongs to us as Europeans and that, as Europeans, we want to protect so it can be passed on to those who will come after us.

Dear Volodymyr, dear Olena, dear colleagues, the path of reconstruction will not be an easy one and will certainly have plenty of pitfalls, but it is also a path that brings with it incredible opportunities. Italians know this perhaps better than anyone else, and in any case they know very well what I am talking about, because we are the people who, out of the ruins of the Second World War, built an economic miracle in the 1960s. Back then, our nation too was destroyed and faced huge difficulties, and yet it managed. It got back on its feet with determination, pride and industriousness, and became the economic and industrial power everyone knows today. I like to think that this conference can be the starting point for Ukraine’s economic miracle, and that we will build that miracle together for you, for us, because every school, every hospital, every church tower we rebuild will be a piece of ourselves we will have rebuilt, a piece of Europe that we will give back to history and to our children.

Thank you, and have a good conference.