A report on Financial Times says that Giuseppe Conte and Emmanuel Macron held an unscheduled dinner this week to defuse tension over immigration — the issue convulsing European politics and which threatens to overshadow a pivotal EU summit this week.
According to one senior Italian official, the Italian prime minister and French president — who was in Rome for an audience with Pope Francis — held a “lengthy” meeting at Casina Valadier, a restaurant in the Villa Borghese gardens in the city centre, on Monday night. The report dismisses previous report about the lack of meeting between the two.
Their immediate concern was the fate of the Lifeline, a ship carrying more than 200 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean — which had been left stranded at sea after Italy’s populist government closed its ports to NGO vessels.
Italian officials said on Tuesday that Malta had agreed to allow the ship to dock, with France, Portugal and Italy putting themselves forward to accept some of the people on board. The encounter between the Italian and French leaders marks a new diplomatic effort to narrow differences on broader migration question ahead of Thursday’s EU council.
