Visita nella Repubblica del Kazakhstan e Vertice Asia Centrale-Italia, intervento del Presidente Meloni

Astana International Forum 2025

“Connecting Minds, Shaping the Future”

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for this presentation I didn’t deserve. 

I am very pleased to be here today in Astana and to take part in this important event of discussion and dialogue promoted by President Tokayev and the Kazakh Government. To them I want to convey my greetings, my gratitude for the invitation and the warm welcome I have been given.

Today marks the beginning of my first official visit to Kazakhstan since the start of my term as President of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Italy. A visit that I do not consider just protocol, but of substance.  We intend to seal the friendship that unites our Nations with concrete facts, by enhancing our strategic collaboration on many crucial fields.

This visit also marks a historic moment in our relations, the first Summit between Italy and the five Central Asian Nations. I treasure this event and I wish to thank not only President Tokayev who agreed to host it, but also President Japarov, President Rahmon, President Berdimuhamedov, and President Mirziyoyev, also for the very special time I had in Uzbekistan. I am certain it will be a decisive moment to intensify our relations, and make them even more sound, long-lasting, and strategic.

This is not a path that begins today, but one we have been pursuing together for some time. Italy was the first Nation in the EU to decide to invest in relations with Central Asia and its individual member Nations, launching a permanent format in order to share ideas. We have shown the way, and our example has indeed led the path, as proven by the first EU-Central Asia Summit last April, which not surprisingly elevated the relations between the region and the European Union to a strategic partnership.

We are proud of this choice, since the capacity to create bridges and opportunities for dialogue, by exploring avenues that others had not had the courage to pursue, is in the DNA of Italian people. This is a legacy we learnt from one of the most famous Italians in history, Marco Polo, who centuries ago crossed these lands to reach the farthest borders in the then known world. There is no better symbol to describe what we celebrate today: cooperation, vision, responsibility. But also the ability to look beyond the horizon, and to learn to understand others, their values, their potential, with respect and with humility. 

One of the fathers of modern geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, made the argument that Central Asia represents one of the “pivots” around which the fate of the world revolves. I am not a geopolitical scholar, I simply observe reality. And reality tells us this region has always been a crossroads between the West and the East, and occupies a strategic role in the global scenario, moreover in difficult times as those we are in.

Central Asia has always been a bridge. The transformations and changes this part of the planet has undergone over the centuries have made it what it is today: the hinge between two Continents, the point of contact between Europe and Asia, the junction between worlds that once were very distant but now are more interconnected than ever. 

And I know what it means, for I say this as an Italian, as the daughter to a Nation that occupies a pivotal position between Europe and Africa, at the very centre of that global Mediterranean that casts its relevance far beyond its own geographic space.

So I believe there is no better place than here to ponder the connections that bind us and those we can build, without fear of going beyond the patterns to which we have been accustomed.

That is why new opportunities for cooperation can be created even among, maybe moreover among, partners who are seemingly far apart and have profoundly different histories. Partners who, however, are capable of seeing the chessboard as a whole, and not just the single quadrant that apparently concerns them most closely.

This is Italy’s approach, and I know it is also your approach, in the direction of a truly global interconnection, from Asia to Europe, from the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific.

But if we really want to shape the future – as the title of this Forum invites us to do – we must have the courage to look beyond our geographical boundaries and pave new paths. Starting, of course, with what already unites us and makes our relationship extremely strong. I am thinking of the energy sector, where our cooperation can help make a difference, both in the more traditional and the more innovative fields, in line with that technological neutrality principle that we are committed to affirm to secure sustainable economic and social systems.

I am also referring to critical raw materials, where our collaboration aims to generate shared benefits and mutual opportunities. I am not forgetting environmental challenges, as the one in which we are at the forefront of regeneration efforts in the Aral Sea, heritage that it is our task and duty to protect. The Italian Climate Fund is an important tool we would like to harness even more to strengthen further shared projects.

Our interconnections also look to digital and physical infrastructures, of which the Middle Corridor is probably the most promising and fascinating challenge. We strongly believe in enhancing this project, which is at the core of the strategic partnership initiated with the EU in Samarkand and can make a significant contribution to supply chain security and stability, both to and from Europe.

The interdependence of our destinies is a fact, even when we are called upon to jointly defend our security, the security of our citizens, the security of our peoples. We must continue to join our efforts also to fight terrorism and dismantle transnational criminal organisations that profit from drug, arms and human trafficking.

So, dear friends, 

everything around us seems to be changing, and the few certainties we thought we had are no longer there. In this shift in epoch, the homogeneous blocs of the past no longer exist, and relations between Nations are based on new and very often unprecedented patterns.

Present times are challenging us, testing each of us. But it is an occasion, it is an occasion to show our value, and it is up to us to decide how to act. We can take refuge in the now faded certainties of the past, or we can try to look beyond, showing the courage that our peoples expect from us.

I have no doubt, and I know that I am not alone along this path.

Thank you very much.