The Diplomat
The Governments of Spain and Italy addressed yesterday the “existing synergies” between their respective Recovery and Resilience Plans and recalled that the two countries are beneficiaries of almost half of the funds of the Next Generation EU plan and, therefore, have “the great responsibility to ensure its success to build a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe.”
The State Secretary for the European Union, Juan González-Barba, and the Secretary General of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (popularly known as “la Farnesina”), Ettore Francesco Sequi, chaired yesterday in Madrid the first meeting of the follow-up mechanism of the commitments made by Spain and Italy during the last bilateral Summit, whose XIX edition was held in Palma last November 25.
“The follow-up mechanism makes it possible to comply with what was agreed at the bilateral Summits and to give continuity to the dialogue and cooperation between the various Ministries in the period between the celebration of the same, all in the interest of achieving concrete results in bilateral cooperation projects,” stressed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The meeting was held in a hybrid format. Spanish representatives of the Presidency of the Government and of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Labor and Social Economy and Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge participated in person, together with Italian representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Labor and Social Policies and Ecological Transition. They were joined, telematically, by the representatives of the other ministerial departments that participated in the last Palma Summit.
The participants stressed that bilateral cooperation enhances national and European efforts to advance the digital and ecological transition of the economies of the two countries, “also emphasizing its social dimension”. They also recalled that “Italy and Spain are beneficiaries of almost half of the funds mobilized by the EU for the Recovery Plan for Europe Next Generation EU” and, therefore, “our two countries have a great responsibility to ensure its success in building a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe,” the press release continued.
The meeting between Gonzalez-Barba and Sequi allowed to determine the main lines of work for the next Spanish-Italian Summit and to deepen on issues such as the Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Southern Neighborhood, the Conference on the Future of Europe and “the synergies between the Recovery and Resilience Plans of Spain and Italy”.
