Macron and Meloni seek to mend ties ahead of NATO, G7 summits in Rome

WEB DESK: French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will look to patch up difficult relations during a bilateral meeting in Rome on Tuesday, as Europe grapples with the seismic geopolitical shifts caused by the Trump administration.

The talks are seen as a potential way to rest relations ahead of key NATO and Group of Seven summits scheduled for later this month.

The meeting could even pave the way for a high-level intergovernmental summit between Paris and Rome, following years of tensions and public disputes between the two leaders.

The tete-a-tete also comes amid heightened concerns around trade and security across Europe and US President Donald Trump’s abrupt moves on both files upended long-established transatlantic ties.

“Leaders argue, sometimes vocally, but this doesn’t compromise relations between nations,” Meloni said last week speaking to reporters. “I’m very happy Emmanuel Macron is coming to Rome so we can sit down and talk about all these dossiers with some calm.”

Tuesday’s meeting in Rome might be the first venue for a reconciliation between the two European leaders who both have Trump’s ear to some degree. While Macron has a cordial, if transactional, relationship with Trump, Meloni is more ideologically aligned with the US president.

An Elysee official acknowledged the two leaders’ divergent positions on Trump, but noted that on trade, it’s the European Commission that speaks on their behalf given the policy file is part of the European Union’s remit.

Europe must make concessions to Trump in trade talks, LVMH’s Arnault says

Talks will focus on themes ranging from Ukraine to the Middle East as well as bilateral relations, potentially touching on sicking points in the business sphere, said the Elysee official, who asked not to be named per French government rules.

The Italian government said in April that it was withdrawing its support for STMicroelecronics NV CEO Jean-Marc Chery after the French-Italian chipmaking venture rejected Italy’s nomination of Marcello Sala to its supervisory board. The board later said the CEO and management team has its backing.

Macron-Meloni Animus

The bilateral talks follow what appeared to be a split between the two leaders last month over peace plans for Ukraine, when Meloni was notably absent from a meeting in Albania involving Macron and other European leaders. Meloni told reporters that Italy’s stance against deploying troops to Ukraine justified her absence. Macron subsequently said that the question of sending troops wasn’t on the table and decried the spread of false information without naming Meloni.

Fundamental ideological differences between Macron and Meloni have frequently fuelled spats that have spilled out into the public realm in recent years. Macron, a centrist, sees Meloni as an Italian equivalent of the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who has spent years attacking him on immigration a well as his premarket policies. For Meloni, a right-wing politician with a tough stance on immigration, the French president is just the kind of arrogant elitist that she built her movement to bring down.

Last year, the two clashed over abortion rights at the G-7 summit Meloni hosted in southern Italy, with the Italian prime minister accusing Macron of electioneering just as he had called parliamentary elections in France. The French president later received an icy reception from Meloni after he arrived late to a dinner reception at the gathering.

Even before Meloni became prime minister in 2022, the two appeared to be at odds on a range of issues. “J’accuse Emmanuel Macron of expoitation, of necolonialism,” Meloni famously said in 2018 while visiting the French-Italian border during a migrant crisis.

The dynamic between the two stands in stark contrast to the warm relations Macron enjoyed with Meloni’s predecessor Mario Draghi, with whom he signed the Quirinal Treaty, a cooperation pact between Italy and France that went into effect early 2023. While the treaty stiputes that the leaders must regularly schedule bilateral government meetings, arrange embassy personnel exchanges and develop joint strategies on Mediterranean policy and security, the tension between Meloni and Macron have made meeting even the most basic requirements more challenging.

Still, Meloni has tried to tone down talks of a rift and recently said the two remain aligned as leaders of allied nations.