Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends her end-of-year press conference in Rome, Italy. /Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni says her government will focus on Africa and Artificial Intelligence (AI) during her country's G7 presidency this year.
"I am hugely concerned about the impact [of AI] on the labor market," said Meloni at a postponed end-of-year press conference in Rome.
Italy took on the rotating presidency of the G7 at the start of January. The government has announced that the group's annual leaders summit will take place in southern Italy in June. Meloni also said that she would like to hold a separate summit specifically focused on AI.
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G7 leaders will spend 2024 grappling with how to respond to the ongoing Russian offensive in Ukraine and Israel's war in Palestine.
Meloni highlighted the importance of providing assistance to Kyiv, to maintain "balance" on the battlefield.
And on the war in the Middle East, the Italian leader repeated her assertion that Israel has the right to defend itself. However, she also called on Israel's government to protect civilian lives in Gaza.
The Prime Minister's traditional annual grilling by journalists was originally scheduled for the days leading up to Christmas but it was rescheduled twice as Meloni was suffering from flu.
Relaunching trade ties with China
Italy withdrew from the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) at the end of last year, but Meloni said she intends to "relaunch" trade relations with China in 2024. Italy became the first and only G7 nation to join the BRI in 2019 but Meloni said membership had led to a "less favorable" trade balance for her country.
She added that she plans to travel to China "as soon as possible".
On migration, a key political priority for Italy's right-wing coalition government, Meloni said she believes the European Union's new rules are "better" than the previous system. Last month, European leaders struck a historic deal to reform the bloc's migration policy.
However, Meloni added that the agreement will "not solve" the challenges presented by migration and called for "strategic investments" in Africa.
"What I think needs to be done in Africa is not charity, but to build cooperation and serious strategic relationships as equals, not predators… to defend the right not to have to emigrate," said Meloni.
She also admitted - not for the first time in recent weeks - that she is not satisfied with her government's progress on migration so far.
According to UN data, more than 150,000 migrants arrived on Italian soil by sea last year, the highest annual figure since 2016.
When asked by a reporter what had been her toughest moment of the year, Meloni named February's Cutro disaster, when more than 90 migrants died in a shipwreck off the southern coast of Italy.
Hope for fall in interest rates in 2024
The Prime Minister expressed hope that there will be a fall in interest rates over the course of 2024.
"I trust that this year we can be reasonable and imagine lower interest rates that would free up resources that we are paying on Italian debt," Meloni told reporters at the news conference.
Last month, the European Central Bank left interest rates for the Eurozone unchanged after raising them multiple times during 2023. Inflation in the countries that use the Euro as their currency has been falling in recent months after increasing significantly following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
With elections for the European Parliament taking place in Italy and across the rest of the European Union in June, Meloni said she is open to a TV debate with Elly Schlein, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party (PD).
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