(ANSA) – ROME, 9 JULY – Italy can make it but it will require “a change of pace and continuity in foreign commercial policy on international markets and particularly in China”. There’s a strong demand for Made in Italy worldwide which even exceeds the capacity of the country to satisfy that demand”.
Lapo Pistelli, the Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister is sure of it, as he explained in his address this afternoon at the presentation of the new issue of the bimonthly magazine East, dedicated to relations between China and India and Asia and the EU. “We have a manufacturing power that in Europe places us neck and neck with Germany, with long distribution chains that have reached the four corners of the globe, and we’re not just strong thanks to our famous four “F”s (food, Ferrari, fashion and family), but also in other lesser known sectors such as renewable energy”, Pistelli adds. The Italy brand is still going strong and “we can make it”. Italy, he goes on to say, “is a medium sized power, with approximately 60 million citizens, that can fill an important role in Europe and the Mediterranean, which represents and opportunity but also has many drawbacks, and in Asia”. Out of 31 commercial disputes filed by the UE, Giuseppe Scognamiglio, president of the Europeye publishing house went on to explain, 18 are with China. Lastly the one connected to customs duties on wines. To face up to these disputes, according to Pistelli, “Europe is key and is the only entity to pack enough of a punch to make sure that our contenders looks us in the eye. We have to use the EU as a vessel in terms of its political clout, but then everyone needs to man the vessel with their own abilities”. If there were no 28 state Europe”, he adds, “things would be much worse. By way of example, he recalls that “Greece is now calling for help, it’s negotiating. Without the EU, Athens would have resolved its differences with cannon blasts”. The world outside EU-28 is changing considerably. There are no other “integration and solidarity spaces like the one of our community”. “In Asia, relations are very strained, between China and Japan, between Japan and North Korea, between China and Taiwan. If North Korea happened to implode – he rounds off – no solidarity mechanism would kick in because there is no one who would be in a position to take action as happens here on the Old Continent”. (ANSA).
(ANSA) – ROME, 9 JULY – Italy can make it but it will require “a change of pace and continuity in foreign commercial policy on international markets and particularly in China”. There’s a strong demand for Made in Italy worldwide which even exceeds the capacity of the country to satisfy that demand”.
