(Adnkronos) – The planned India-Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEC) to foster connectivity and economic integration between Asia and Europe is “a priority for Italy”, which is striving “to achieve this goal quickly”, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said in Mumbai on Thursday.
“Looking to the future, IMEC is a priority for Italy,” Tajani told an Italy-India business forum, referring to the US-backed transport project to connect India to Europe via the Middle East by sea and rail.
“It is an infrastructure route, but also a commercial one, and Italy is working hard to achieve this goal quickly,” Tajani continued.
‘We are talking to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, said Tajani. The corridor aims to extend from India across the Arabian Sea to the UAE and via Saudi Arabia,before connecting to Jordan and Israel to Europe, where the geostrategic Adriatic port of Trieste is a candidate for IMEC’s European gateway
“You are the beginning, Italy is the end (of the corridor). Or we are the beginning, you are the end,’ added Tajani.
An IMEC summit is slated to take place in March, Italy’s envoy for IMEC, Francesco Talo, told the Trieste Indo-Mediterranean Business Forum last week.
In sign of the government’s commitment to IMEC, Talo is accompanying Tajani on his current three-day visit to India, which aims to deepen political and economic ties with Italy’s strategic partner.
IMEC was announced on the sidelines of a G20 leaders summit in September 2023 as an alternative to China’s flagship Belt and Road global infrastructure project.
The only G7 nation to have signed up to the Belt and Road initiative in 2019, Italy withdrew from the project in December 2023 after premier Giorgia Meloni cited a lack of substantial economic benefits and amid a strategic reassessment of China, reflecting a growing transatlantic convergence on the challenge it poses.
