Indo-Pacific to Indo-Mediterranean: Italy-India focus on maritime ties

New Delhi: Italian policy makers, including a minister, senator, defence secretary and ex-diplomatic adviser to PM Gigorgia Meloni, visited New Delhi and Mumbai last week and this week to push maritime partnership with India as an immediate follow-up on the Joint Action Plan adopted at the PM-level meet in Brazil on the sidelines of the G20 meet in November.

India and Italy are working to put together a maritime partnership, including via the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC), on what it calls ‘Cotton Route’ connecting Italian ports and Indian ports in the Western Indian Ocean with a focus on trade, defence and blue economy. Italy wants to be India’s gateway to Europe via IMEEC.

Italy is also keen to set up space cooperation with India and is opening a section in the Italian consulate in Bangalore for this purpose, Italian Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso, currently on a trip to India, said here on Monday to a select group of reporters. Urso also mentioned that Italy, which once possessed civilian nuclear energy, is keen to partner with India to relaunch third and fourth generations of nuclear power systems.

Besides meeting Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal and Union minister dealing with space, Urso also met Union coal minister to explore cooperation in the critical minerals sector.

Over the weekend, a conference on ‘Blue and Space Economy’ was held at the Villaggio Italia, set up at the Indira Dock in Mumbai for the Vespucci World Tour stop in India.

The event was inaugurated by the Italian Ambassador to India Antonio Bartoli and attended by Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal and Urso. The Italian minister highlighted how sixty years after the launch of the first Italian satellite – San Marco-1 – made Italy the third country to reach the milestone in 1964 after the then Soviet Union and USA.Meloni’s former diplomatic adviser and senior diplomat Francesco Talo, who was in Mumbai over the weekend, said that both India and Italy are peninsular countries which make them automatic partners. “From Indo-Pacific to Indo-Mediterranean, the idea is to create synergy for trade by safeguarding freedom of navigation.”

Talo mentioned that the idea is to connect ports of Trieste and Venice with India which can then be expanded to connect ports in Slovenia and Croatia.

The two PMs have met five times in the last two years.