President Meloni’s remarks with the President of Turkmenistan

Thank you for this opportunity, firstly the opportunity to meet you personally. You were the only President of a Central Asian republic that I still hadn’t met personally, and I hope that, from now on, we will have the opportunity to deepen our relations. Among other things, I know you are planning to visit Italy in October, on the occasion of the archaeological exhibition on Turkmenistan, and so please allow me to take this opportunity to officially invite you to pay a visit to Rome. I think that could also be an opportunity to further strengthen our bilateral relations. 

I believe our relations are excellent, but I also think there is the possibility to do much more in several areas, ranging of course from energy and heavy industry to the agricultural industry, infrastructure, transport and critical raw materials, which is an area Italy is now trying to focus on much more. If you agree, I would therefore like to propose that, on the occasion of your visit, we also organise a business forum between our companies in the margins, to further explore what the elements of our cooperation can be. 

I would obviously also like to thank you for attending this summit, which I strongly wanted at leaders’ level; this is the first time this summit is being held at leaders’ level. As you know, Italy was the first nation in the European Union to envisage this format and we like to think it was able to set a good example, as was also seen with the summit held between the European Union and the Central Asian republics. We of course understand the importance of this region, which is historically a crossroads for relations between West and East, for relations between Europe and Asia. We therefore want to work much more together, and I think today can be a good way to begin and to do so at the highest level. So, my sincere thanks.