(Adnkronos) – Italy wants to mark the 70th anniversary of the Messina-Taormina conference – which led to the creation of the European Union – by forging a peaceful reunified Europe that integrates the western Balkans, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Friday.
“We too want to start again from those same places (Taormina and Messina) to build a future Europe of peace, freedom and growth,” Tajani said in a video message at a presentation of the 18-19 June celebrations.
“And we want to do it together with the friends who look to us for the reunification of Europe, starting with the Balkan countries, which are for us a strategic investment in security, economic development and (shared) values,” Tajani went on.
“We find ourselves facing existential challenges: wars, terrorism, migratory pressures, protectionism, social and economic inequalities. Together we will overcome all these challenges, I am sure of it,” he said.
The EU – successor to the European Economic Community – must drive forward now-urgent reforms, including institutional ones, the completion of the single market and a single European defence, Tajani said.
“We must strive for a simplified Europe, whose businesses are more competitive, while always keeping a focus on the individual,” Tajani concluded.
The foreign ministry is one of the promoters of the 18-19 June conference marking the ‘Messina Resolution’ of 3 June 1955, which was issued after a two-day conference of foreign ministers of Italy and five other member states of the European Coal and Steel community.
The ‘Messina Resolution’ led to the signing in Rome of the Treaties of the EEC and of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) on 25 March 1957.
Tajani and Sicily’s governor Renato Schifani will attend the opening of the 18-19 June conference with the current EU presidencies Poland, Denmark and Cyprus as well as representatives of the other countries that signed the 1955 ‘Messina Resolution’ together with Italy: France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, according to a foreign ministry statement.
