In the name of their "relationship of trust and friendship" but also the "exceptional ties that unite" the two countries, Emmanuel Macron will receive on June 7 the Italian President Sergio Mattarella, announced Wednesday the Elysee after a new crisis between Rome and Paris on the issue of immigration.
The French president and his Italian counterpart are to visit together, on the day of its inauguration, the exhibition "Naples in Paris" at the Louvre Museum, which "honors the historical links between France and Italy," says the French side.
The Capodimonte Museum in Naples, southern Italy, has lent about sixty of its greatest masterpieces to the Louvre, "which will dialogue with its collections and even complete them" to give "a unique insight into Italian painting in France," adds the French presidency. "This visit will be followed by a meeting at the Elysée Palace," she said.
Tensions over immigration
The French authorities insist on the "exceptional links" between the France and Italy while the two neighbors have just gone through a new phase of tensions over immigration. Since the coming to power in Rome in the autumn of an ultra-conservative coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, relations have experienced several bouts of fever on this thorny theme.
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A 45-minute meeting between Emmanuel Macron and the Italian prime minister on the sidelines of the G7 in Japan, then a visit by the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna to Rome last week seemed to dispel, for now, these misunderstandings. And paved the way for a visit by Giorgia Meloni in France, probably in June, although the precise date has not yet been set.
