(Adnkronos) – Italy and Germany on Friday underscored their support for embattled Ukraine and for war-devastated Gaza and agreed to hold regular dialogue “on international and security issues of common interest,” according a strategic cooperation document signed in Rome by Italy’s premier Giorgia Meloni and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz
In the 28-page document, Italy and Germany agreed to hold regular consultations between senior officials from their foreign ministries to coordinate action within the EU and other international organisations including the United Nations, Nato, Osce, the G7 and G20.
The document is entitled ‘Action Plan for strategic bilateral and European Union strategic cooperation’.
“In our dialogue, we will closely coordinate our present efforts on the response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, including on sanctions, support to Ukraine’s resilience and reconstruction and to initiatives aimed at achieving a just peace, as well as on the support to the implementation of the US Plan to end the conflict in Gaza, with the aim of alleviating the suffering of the civilian population and paving the way for a two-State solution,” reads the document.
“Our structured dialogue will also focus on the Middle East, including the Gulf region and the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, especially Libya, the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Balkans, China and the Indo-Pacific, and the Arctic, as well as the EU external relations with our main partners,” the document continues.
Meloni and Merz inked the document at an intergovernmental summit they co-chaired in Rome at the 17th-century Villa Doria Pamphili.
The two leaders also signed a seven-page security and defence accord which contains a pledge to advance an annual joint (2+2) consultation mechanism between their respective defence and foreign ministries on “issues of common interest” supported by a 2+2 dialogue at senior official level.
The accord vows to intensify defence industry collaboration and to extend this to includes allies and partners, to hold regular bilateral and “if appropriate” multilateral land, naval, air, space, and cyber military exercises “to increase interoperability, readiness, and ability to conduct joint operations, under, for instance, EU or NATO command”.
Germany and Italy also intend to strengthen space cooperation “by improving capacities to jointly act in space to support security and defence” and to hold regular bilateral space dialogue “to develop shared positions”, according to the document.
