Meloni and Macron to Meet in Rome on June 3 Amid Efforts to Mend Ties
Italy's Giorgia Meloni will host France's Emmanuel Macron next week in talks seen as an attempt to ease tensions after years of strained relations and recent jibes between the European leaders.The far-right Italian prime minister will host a one-on-one meeting next Tuesday evening with the French president, in what Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper called a "turning point summit". "Meloni reconciles with Macron," added the Il Messaggero daily, describing the meeting as a "thaw".
It was Macron who proposed the visit, according to his team, "because it is his role to bring Europeans together and he is also keen to work with her."The meeting comes just weeks after the tense relations between the pair were exposed at a summit of European leaders in Albania on May 16. Meloni was in Tirana but was notably absent from a meeting between Macron and the leaders of Germany, Britain and Poland with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that was followed by a joint call to US President Donald Trump.
Meloni said she did not join them because she opposes the idea of sending Italian troops to Ukraine to enforce any eventual peace in the war with Russia. Macron later said the Italian was operating under a "misunderstanding". "The discussion we were having was a discussion to achieve a ceasefire," he said, adding that there was no mention of sending troops in the call to Trump. - Unity of the West - During a joint press conference in Rome the next day with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Meloni called on her European counterparts to "abandon selfishness" and focus on "the unity of the West".
There have been tensions between Paris and Rome since Meloni took over in October 2022, including an early spat over migration and another at the G7 summit in Italy last year over abortion rights. But the European Union's second- and third-largest economies are both facing similar challenges in the Ukraine war and Trump's sweeping tariffs against the bloc. Commentators note that both Macron and Meloni have different strengths that could prove useful to the other -- making reconciliation advantageous.
Italy has less influence on the diplomatic stage than France, which has nuclear weapons and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. But Meloni has a significant asset in her favour in her privileged relationship with Trump and US Vice President JD Vance, both of whom have referred to her as a "friend" who shares their conservative values and hostility to immigrants.
On May 18, Meloni hosted talks in Rome between Vance and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the first at such a high level since Trump began imposing tariffs.Opening the meeting, which came after the inauguration mass for new Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, Vance hailed Meloni's role as a "bridge-builder between Europe and the United States".
That will not have escaped Macron, who at home is unpopular and faces a hostile parliament, and for whom diplomacy has become one of the only areas where he can still hope to exert influence before the end of his term in 2027. As for Meloni -- whose approval ratings are at more than 45 percent percent even after two and a half years in power -- she too has an interest in reconciling with Macron, whose verbal sparring undermines the international stature she has worked hard to project.
