Address by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the 16th Conference of the Ambassadors of Italy

Allow me to address a very cordial greeting to the Vice Presidents of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Constitutional Court, to the Cardinal Apostolic Nuncio, as well as to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Undersecretaries of State.

I would like to thank the Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Tajani, for having invited me here this morning at the opening of this Conference. I am truly happy to once again be offered the opportunity to address the Conference of Mesdames and Messrs. the Ambassadors of Italy: first and foremost, it enables me to reaffirm my appreciation for the work carried out by the diplomatic and consular network in due compliance with the foreign policies that, according to the Constitution, are outlined by the Parliament and the Government, in the exclusive general interest of our Country and with the insuppressible political neutrality characteristic of whoever is called to represent the Republic.

For me, this opportunity also represents and provides me with the possibility of expressing my gratitude for the unfailingly excellent collaboration that I receive in the performance of my office.

You work with the responsibility of tangibly manifesting Italy’s vocation to act in favour of an international community in peace, stable and prosperous.

Your commitment is valuable, for which allow me to express the gratitude of the Republic.

Mesdames and Messrs. the Ambassadors, to say that we are living in an ordinary time would be denying the obvious.

Nor can we be comforted by the fact that, at international level, periods of peace and periods of tension and conflict have often succeeded each other.

Because we are not only faced with the presumption of determining new equilibria induced by the adamant appearance of key players that only recently were prevalently concentrated on their respective domestic domain.

The challenges now facing humanity put the survival of the planet at risk, starting with the consequences of climate conditions and ending with themethods of warfare – which have brought us back to times and conditions that have no right to arise again – in which the people come to be hostage to the aggressive policies of their respective governments.

To downplay the Russian Federation’s attack against Ukraine to a merely regional issue would be a capital blunder.

Its destabilizing effects are felt in every corner of the globe and they jeopardize the international tools of cooperation and dialogue.

Diplomacy is often obliged to take an approach that is euphemistically defined “realistic”, abusively attributing to it a presumed nature of mediocre cynicism. Whereas, on the contrary, the exercise of diplomacy is a lofty function, an instrument to authentically manifest the deepest-rooted values of a community.

The opposite would mean reproposing the twentieth-century question posed by the French member of Parliament Marcel Déat “To die for Gdansk?”. We all remember how the story continued.

The “evidence” of war in and of itself contains a terrible “cupio dissolvi”.

We are elicited by the phenomenon of globalization – which is far from new, if it is true that it also characterized the late 1800s – which, from the free circulation of goods and ideas, has extended  much further today through the existence of platforms on which everybody can share their experiences in real time and with such pervasiveness that they often mix reality with virtuality and put at risk the basis of all individuals’ autonomous exercise of their free spirit to criticize.  

The debate on globalization – intended as a period, rather than as a process – is all but idle.

What matters is returning to the sensitivity that prevailed prior to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations General Assembly resolutions on the economic rights and duties of States.

Rather, it has to do with the issue of building the rules of the international community.

From the heart of Europe – shattered by the dramatic experience of World War II – emerged the urgency to abandon the criteria that had characterized the traditional conferences that followed the conflicts of the two previous centuries, looking ahead instead of at the past.

The goal was no longer that of imposing conditions to the losers so as to put the then triumphant parties at a vantage point in the foreseeable successive conflict, as much as to pave the way for war to disappear altogether from the dictionary of international relations.

And this is what is solemnly enshrined in Art. 11 of the Constitution, which appears to be perfectly in line with Art. 2, Para. 4 of the United Nations Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

In essence, it superseded the “jus ad bellum” – the conditions under which States may resort to war – an expression long thought to be an essential attribute of a nation’s sovereignty.

This is what gave rise to multilateralism.

Unfortunately, in these past few decades, this framework has revealed structural shortcomings that were present ever since its establishment which also derived from the prevailing role attributed to the winning powers of the time within the UN Security Council, which was theoretically delegated the onus of holding a monopoly over the right to intervene in disputes between States.

From these considerations arises the global nature of Russia’s invasion of the territory of another nation, starting from Crimea and the territories of Georgia.

The intent appears to be that of once again breaking up Europe in pieces and making it impotent, freezing relations between States, and hampering them from freely exercising their sovereignty, as it already happened, for example, at the time of the “Iron Curtain” through the application of the theory of “limited sovereignty”.

The pretension of unearthing the “imperial” logic is unacceptable in the third millennium.

Nowadays it cannot even be supported by the ideological alibi of a juxtaposition/competition between systems based on opposite life plans.

The only logic that remains is that of arrogance.

This is the basic reason why Countries – like Italy – which refuse an imperialist intent and have no ambition to become someone else’s “satellite”, put their stakes on multilateralism, cooperating on the same level with all the States and peoples of good will, also with a view to governing globalization, upgrading it in terms of liberty and wellbeing.

In addition, affirming the principle of democratic sovereignty over de facto sovereignty, oftentimes claimed by “over the top” companies, convinced that they hold the right to dictate the rules.

The temptation to tear apart the multilateral system passes through the unscrupulous use of numerous practices: private armies used as mercenaries in theatres of war; the militarization and privatization of space – the long-dated theatre, at least up to now, of best practices in cooperation; weaponizing the use of available energy and food resources; evading laws considered to be stringent to push down the level of protection of general interests. This is just an exemplary list of some of these causes and instruments.

All this occurs at a time when the decisions that really matter – for example those made by the Cop28 – are the fruit of “long supply chains”that involve international organizations and conferences, continental actors like the European Union and the African Union, single States, and the economic and social forces of civil society.

The domain of international concertation is now ubiquitous.

Not even the masterminds of destabilization and disorder can imagine that the international community will ever give up organizing and regulating itself only because hostile forces – including terrorist-based groups – claim to have arguments that justify their acts.

And consequently, that the international community has to renounce defending the values of peace, development, and coexistence enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

Up to only recently – after a period full of hope following the fall of the Berlin wall, which revitalized the United Nations – the end of the historical “Cold War” blocs reopened spaces to harbour initiatives promoted by the ambitions of regional players.

Whereas, for a considerably long period, key international players were capable of assuming their responsibilities, contributing to stability and peaceful coexistence, this is patently no longer true.

To wage a war with consequences that have a spillover effect at global level puts into question, if not rules out altogether, the eligibility of being among the proposers of solutions to end it. And the example is rather contagious, across all the continents.

Please allow me to go back to the issue of the two main ongoing crisis scenarios, both because their proximity has a direct impact on us and because, as already stated, they exemplify tendencies that must be reversed.

In the Middle East, the Hamas terrorist movement has triggered spirals of violence of gigantic proportions, which have also succeeded to sabotage any attempt at establishing a dialogue, freezing it in the short term.

The barbaric murder of hundreds of helpless Israeli citizens resparked an atypical war between the State of Israel and a terrorist group which holds the de facto control over a territory with civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian, who are tragically called to pay the highest price.

Terrorism makes headway where the political option loses ground or the patient weaving of diplomatic solutions is frustrated across the decades.

Undeniably, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the result of the prolonged incapacity to build a roadmap of dialogue and coexistence and to pursue the only reasonable road: the two-State solution.

Giving up tackling problems leaves the gate open to extremisms.

The Middle Eastern crisis, with its loadful of hate, has led the phenomenon of antisemitism – which now, as in the past, feeds on commonplace and a distorted vision of history – to resurface from theundercurrent as extensions of subcultures that resist time and reason; fully-fledged “storehouses of hate, never emptied of their toxic stock of goods”, as Senator Liliana Segre recently defined them.

They are messages that must be definitely condemned, with no ambiguity and convenient interpretations.

With Ukraine, the scenario of disputed lands and the denial of rights also concerns Europe.

It is a wound open in the heart of our continent, bringing back the handsof the clock of history to when it was thought possible to decide the fate of entire populations through the division of territories and of spheres of influence.

It is now 22 months that the Ukrainian people are trying to keep this effort at bay and, once again, it is the civilian casualties that pay the highest price.

In this scenario, as in Gaza, surfaces the need to stringently apply therules of international humanitarian law, also in war, whose urgency already emerged – as we know – with the Geneva Convention in 1864.

It is inadmissible that in the armed conflicts of this century, attacks and retaliations target unarmed civilian populations.

It is up to the international community to prevent that this politics of subjugation – which finds imitators in a variety of situations and in different continents – undertake new adventures.

Messieurs and Mesdames the Ambassadors,

in a situation marked by destabilizing forces and the strengthening of key global players, the political space in which to exercise a de facto sovereignty nurturing the values and the interest of the Italian Republic isadmittedly shared within the European Union.

Belonging to the Union derives, first and foremost, from a set of values: peace, liberty, social cohesion, democracy, and rule of law. To juxtapose this with an exclusive and solitary exercise of sovereignty – which would increasingly seem to be merely apparent – is an illusory and sterile effort.

For those who have freely chosen to belong to the Union, it seems to be wholly incoherent to see the inconsistent debate between a Europe of States and an ever more integrated Europe.

Also following the recent summit, from the conscience of Europe rises the firm commitment to relaunch the prospect of a multilateralism that is increasingly respectful of the future of humanity.

By its very nature, the European Union must evolve if it wants to avoid backtracking and, now more than ever, we have the duty to relaunch the integration process by strengthening its governance mechanisms.

As any human construct, the European Union is not perfect: it is a permanent work-in-progress that needs to be propped up every day with everybody’s joint efforts, combining resilience, firm clarity, and patience, as are also necessary to close the ongoing negotiations for the Stability and Growth Pact.

It is a work-in-progress whose architecture needs to be completed, as it cannot hold up a partial construction too much longer.

We can only look forward with impatience at the steps still needed to build a fully-fledged European foreign and security policy.

The ongoing crises oblige us to act jointly, while continuing to work at developing greater common response capabilities – in permanent coordination with our allies and with NATO – being fully aware that we must improve the Union’s strategic capacity and responsibility.

Europe’s security will increasingly depend on the Europeans’ own capacity to assure it.

The integration project’s permanent historic appeal is confirmed by the will of many Countries to take part in it.

In the past few decades, the enlargement project has revealed to be one of the most important instruments at the service of the internal stability of the entire continent.

In this respect, the European Council’s decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova and to grant Georgia the status of candidate country indicate the state of play of our Eastern partners in the EU accession process.

Nonetheless, we need to be effective, in terms of timing and methods.

Twenty years after the Thessaloniki Declaration, it is essential to proceed to integrate the Western Balkans, starting from those Countries that have long expedited a reform process with a view to becoming a member of the European family.

The tensions in the Balkans ring as an alarm warning us to focus our attention on the people of this region.

It is positively relevant that the European Council has contemplated the possibility of opening negotiations with Bosnia Herzegovina.

Enlargement and the in-depth study of economic and political integration mechanisms are two closely intertwined aspects.

For the European Union to be able to play a relevant role internally and internationally, these must proceed in parallel.

This is a necessity that should induce us to make an increasing use of the majority vote.

In six months’ time, we will take part in that important exercise of popular sovereignty represented by the election of the European Parliament, which will be followed by the designation of a new European Commission.

We must diligently resume the debate that was suspended after the close of the Conference on the Future of Europe.

It is not sufficient to drag forward by inertia.

Messieurs and Mesdames the Ambassadors,

In such a complex scenario, Italy’s choice of multilateralism also unfolds through its convinced support for the action of the United Nations, which is the fulcrum of that architecture of global governance so patently under pressure today.

It is a crisis of confidence that often arises in the juxtaposition – in many ways prejudicial in its artificiality – between the West and the rest of the world, which tends to aggregate under the same name conditions that can differ widely – whether economic, social, institutional setup, respect for human rights – thus trying to set aside, in the portrayal, incompatibilities and conflicting interests.

The heritage of values that are intended as Western in actual fact correspond to many of the documents ratified within the United Nations: rule of law, human rights, and the rights of people in the broadest sense.

With regards to the architecture of multilateral governance – the best bulwark against the destabilizing forces that we are experiencing – it is necessary to relaunch a reform aimed at increasing the effectiveness of mechanisms that are often still crystallized as they were after World War II, as I tried to recall a short while ago.

It is an evolutionary process that will require time and realism and that primarily involves a revision of the global economic governance instruments which today represents a priority for the Countries of the Global South.

Europe has the duty and the strategic interest to work with the Countries that share its democratic principles and that elicit greater attention for their needs. A balanced development of the regions of the world is in everybody’s interest.

Italy is in a privileged situation to contribute to achieving this goal.

When holding the presidency of the G7, we will have the possibility to give new momentum to many of the global challenges, including that of migration flows and food security. These themes are closely interconnected, especially in the African continent.

The Italian Presidency shall also focus on the issue of Artificial Intelligence: a scientific advancement that gives humankind the opportunity of tackling and resolving problems that we thought were beyond our reach, but that also exposes us to the risk of dangerous conditioning in information, intrusions into our private sphere, radical changes in production processes, and the possible widening of the already yawning gap between rich and poor, strong and weak. And ultimately, to the risk of undermining our democratic systems.

It is an extremely valuable prospect that must be adequately and promptly regulated in order to maximize its positive effects.

Allow me to conclude by thanking you all for your kind attention and bywishing you a fruitful two-day in-depth study programme and the best success in the demanding year ahead.

Best wishes