Meloni, Italia-India relationship elevated to special strategic partnership

"Today we elevate our relationship to the level of a special strategic partnership. Now Italia and India are closer than ever". So said Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in joint statements to the press with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after the bilateral at the Casina del Bel Respiro in Villa Doria Pamphilj, Rome.

"This is a day that I do not consider reductive to call historic for relations between our nations. My friend Narendra Modi has been at the helm of India continuously since 2014, but this," he noted, "is his first mission to Italia. The last bilateral mission of an Indian Prime Minister to Italia was in 2000. Today together we fill this gap. This visit is the culmination of the path built in recent years to reknit the threads of the relationship, to take it to the highest level ever'.

"We set ourselves the target of growing our already robust trade interchange to EUR 20 billion from the current EUR 14 billion in the next three years, i.e. by 2029," Meloni said.

There is a new confidence, we are taking a leap forward in our relations by announcing the strategic partnership, which is on schedule for the EUR 20 billion bilateral trade," Modi told a press conference. "More than 800 Italian companies are in India and actively participating, there is new enthusiasm and confidence," he added.