Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said her nation is still mulling its options but could maintain "good relations" with China without being part of its controversial Belt and Road Initiative.
The far-right nationalist leader – who had indicated to U.S. leaders that her nation would exit the investment pact by the end of the year – said on Sunday she has not yet decided whether to withdraw from Beijing's US$1 trillion global infrastructure program, also known as the New Silk Road.
Italy is the only member of the Group of Seven rich democracies to have joined the program, originally created to bridge East Asia and Europe through development and investment initiatives. It has since expanded to parts of Africa, the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas.
As relations grow increasingly tense between Washington and Beijing, Italy has come under pressure to side with its G-7 Western members.
"It is still too early to say what the outcome of our evaluation will be, which is very delicate and affects multiple interests," Meloni was quoted as saying in an article by Il Messaggero.
"In any case, Italy is the only member of the G-7 to have signed the memorandum of accession to the Silk Road, but it is not the European and Western state that has the greatest economic relations and trade exchanges with China," she said.
"This means that you can have good relations, even in important areas, with Beijing without necessarily forming part of an overall strategic plan."
A network of infrastructure – and loans
Just a week earlier, Meloni attended the Japanese-led G-7 summit in Hiroshima where world leaders took into account the rise in nuclear tensions that have skyrocketed with Russia's expanded war in Ukraine. There, the G-7 called on China to pressure Russia to end the war and immediately withdraw.
The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013 by China's President Xi Jinping, grew to include 150 nations and international organizations, but critics describe it as "debt trap diplomacy" for the developing world.
Xi's proposal called for China to loan other countries money for creating new economic links with itself through a network of highways, railways, pipelines and other infrastructure, but the loans would have to be fully repaid with interest.
Defying pressure from Brussels and Washington, Italy, also a key founding NATO member, shocked other Western powers when it became the first and only G-7 nation to join the program. Along with Italy, the G-7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus the European Union as an "8th member."
In March 2019, more than three years before Meloni took power, Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, looking to draw investment and lower the nation's high debt level, signed a five-year non-binding agreement with Xi in Rome. The agreement covered 29 deals worth an estimated US$2.8 billion ranging from energy and agriculture to finance and engineering.
Italy has the eighth largest economy in the world, fourth largest in Europe and third largest in the Eurozone, according to the International Monetary Fund. Unless Meloni changes course and gives China three months' notice of withdrawal, Italy’s involvement in the Belt and Road Initiative would be automatically renewed for another five years in March 2024.
