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ROME, May 29, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - 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.