President Meloni’s remarks with the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev

Mr President, my sincere thanks. I would like to tell you that I am very, very pleased to have honoured the commitment I made with you, to come to Uzbekistan for my first visit to the Central Asian region, when you came to visit me in Rome in 2023. I must truly thank you for this, for the extraordinary welcome you have given me and the Italian delegation. You have demonstrated a friendship that really is exceptional, and I am very grateful to you for that.

I am also very pleased to have had the opportunity to visit Samarkand, a city that clearly represents a great deal for our ties, for our ancient ties; a crossroads in the relationship between Europe and Asia. I believe the ability you are showing to project this nation into the future, aware of how important it is to defend the tradition and identity of this people, forms the basis of the extraordinary results you are achieving, which Uzbekistan is achieving. So, my sincerest congratulations for your work.

Mr President, for Italy, Uzbekistan is a very important partner indeed. Our relations have been solid and excellent for a long time already, but since 2023 we have been working to bring them to another level, clearly with the strategic partnership and now with the intention of strengthening that strategic partnership even further. As we have seen during the first part of our meeting, there are very many areas for enhanced cooperation, and I am very pleased that we have been very concrete in our desire to implement work in all priority areas and, starting from today, that work will be carried out in an even more concrete and even more regular, structured way.

The many agreements we will sign today show how broad the value of our cooperation is. This beautiful publication you have given to me about the investments Italian companies are already making in Uzbekistan for approximately 3 billion, and those under discussion for another 2.4 billion – a book we aim to develop – shows how much work has already been done, and how ready our companies are to continue investing in this nation, on mutual investments, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises but not only, on the agreement on migration and education and training, on the subject of culture and the many projects that are already in place: the Polytechnic University of Turin, the University of Pisa, other universities we can involve also for training, but also culture on a broader level – Uzbekistan always participates, for example, in the Venice Biennale and other important cultural initiatives -, through to the areas of agriculture and, of course, energy and critical raw materials. As can be seen, our cooperation is across the board. 

The joint declaration we have signed and the strategic partnership provide for strategic dialogue between our Ministers of Foreign Affairs and a joint economic committee. We intend to use these two tools immediately, because we want this to be a historic visit. In order for something to be historic, it must initiate something new, and what we want to do from today is to be extremely concrete, to carry out a six-monthly assessment of the level of work we are doing.

Thank you, Mr President.