Joe Biden lands in Rome, for the first time as president of the United States.
And it does so on the strength of a $ 1,750 billion plan for climate and recovery, two of the great themes - together with vaccines - of the G20 led by Italy at the weekend.
An agreement, the one found within the Democrats, which, although halved in terms of funds initially foreseen, allocates the record figure of 550 billion only to the fight against climate change, allowing Biden to assert the US leadership at the table of Twenty on the issue.
The president wanted to explain this in person to the nation on TV, so much so as to postpone the take-off of Air Force One towards Italy. Accompanied by his wife Jill, Biden will continue on Monday to Glasgow for Cop26. The first engagement of his three days in Rome will be the private meeting with Pope Francis, then the two bilateral face-to-face, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi and with President Sergio Mattarella. Climate and recovery, as well as health and the other issues of the G20 in Italy, which has made multilateralism the figure of its presidency, will also be at the center of the American leader's talks with Draghi. On the eve of the summit, among other things, the first rumors about the draft of the final declaration leaked out which, according to the Bloomberg agency, defines global warming as a challenge "existential "in front of which the G20 assumes a series of commitments, including that of remaining anchored to the Paris agreement. With Biden, the Prime Minister will also want to underline how the bilateral relationship between Italy and the US is a cornerstone of foreign policy and the desire to further strengthen it. While the tenant of the White House will be interested in the future of the European Union after Angela Merkel's departure, and that of NATO in the face of the growing project of a European defense and in the presence of of an increasingly threatening China.the Prime Minister will also want to underline how the bilateral relationship between Italy and the US is a cornerstone of Italian foreign policy and the desire to further strengthen it. While the tenant of the White House will be interested in the future of the European Union after Angela Merkel's departure, and that of NATO in the face of the growing project of a European defense and in the presence of an increasingly threatening China.the Prime Minister will also want to underline how the bilateral relationship between Italy and the US is a cornerstone of Italian foreign policy and the desire to further strengthen it. While the tenant of the White House will be interested in the future of the European Union after Angela Merkel's departure, and that of NATO in the face of the growing project of a European defense and in the presence of an increasingly threatening China.
In Italy, the American president will in fact seek reassurance on the strength of the Western front to stem Beijing's hegemonic claims in the region, its commercial aggression, the wall on human rights and reluctance on the climate. A request that Biden could put on the plate of a green light to the common European defense also in the bilateral with the French president Emmanuel Macron, the first since the submarine crisis, also expected in the capital on Friday afternoon. Relations between the United States and Italy and the strengthening of the Euro-Atlantic ones, after the lows reached with Donald Trump, will also be discussed at the Quirinale.
It is the first conversation between Biden and Mattarella and it is foreseeable that the American president will inquire about the upcoming elections and the stability of Italy in the next year. But it will also be a courtesy visit, a sort of farewell from Mattarella who will not go to the United States before the end of his seven-year term. The first meeting of the day, however, is the one with the Pope, the third between the two, the first since Biden sits in the White House as the second Catholic president in American history after John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In addition to political issues such as the climate emergency, migrants, the fight against the pandemic and relations with China, the background to the private interview will be the question of abortion, which Biden supports as the exclusive choice of women but which Bergoglio compares to "a murder".
All this on the eve of the vote of the American bishops' conference on a document that intends to prohibit communion for those politicians in favor of termination of pregnancy. The meeting then weighs the protest of accredited journalists after the Vatican press office decided, without providing explanations, to cancel the scheduled live TV event: the images had to concern - as usual in these cases, and as it was for Trump and Obama - the initial greetings and the first exchange of words, and at the end the exchange of gifts. Only the arrival by car of Biden in the courtyard of San Damaso, without the presence of the Pope, will be available to journalists and cameras. After the commitments in an armored Rome, the US president will fly to Scotland while his wife Jill, greeting the other first ladies,it will continue to Naples for a visit to the US Navy base of Capodichino, as well as to a Neapolitan school.
