On 20 November Argentina’s President Javier Milei hosted Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the Casa Rosada presidential palace.
Analysis:
Both far-right fans of US president-elect Donald Trump, the two leaders share an ideological affinity and are close allies. Meloni was one of the first international politicians to congratulate Milei for winning the Argentine elections in November last year. Meloni, who is on her first official visit to Argentina, arrived having taken part in the recent G20 leaders’ summit in Brazil. As expected, their meeting produced strong pledges of future cooperation.
- The two leaders had previously met in February, when Milei visited Pope Francis in the Vatican, and in June at the G7 summit in the Italian resort of Borgo Egnazia which Meloni was hosting.
- In a joint press conference, Milei railed against what he dubbed the “woke virus” and “gender ideology”, underlining similarities between the two governments, in their defence of “free trade, common sense and private property”.
- Meloni also highlighted alignment on priorities such as “freedom” and foreign policy issues such as Russia’s war in Ukraine (the two are anti-Russia), the Middle East (the two are pro-Israel), and “the Venezuelan crisis”. As regards the latter, neither has recognised Nicolás Maduro as the victor of Venezuela’s 28 July elections, while yesterday Meloni followed the US government in recognising opposition candidate Edmundo González as Venezuela’s president-elect - which the Argentine government did back in August.
- Meloni also revealed the two governments had agreed to work together in three key areas: “political collaboration” on a five-year action plan to identify particular sectors for the two countries to cooperate on. She said the second area was cooperation in the fight against organised crime, with Italy to provide Argentina with technical assistance, while the third area was that of trade and investment. Meloni said 300 Italian companies are currently present in Argentina, employing 16,000 people. She expressed an interest in collaborating in areas such as the energy transition, infrastructure, supply of critical basic materials, air transport, and space.
Looking Ahead: In the joint press conference, Milei also referenced the idea of an alliance of “free nations” – an idea he floated at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) investor summit which recently took place in the US at the Mar-a-Lago private club and resort owned by Trump. At the summit Milei suggested that the founding members would be Argentina, the US, Italy, and Israel.