Italy is thankful to India for supporting Italian G20 Presidency focusing on global economic recovery: Envoy

Multilateralism is key to address global challenges in a holistic approach. With this in mind Italy and India have been working closely together and Italy is thankful to India for the support given to Italian G-20 Presidency. This cooperation will continue in the years ahead and will be further enhanced once India will enter the Troika next December 1st,Italian envoy to India Vincenzo de Luca told ET’s Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury ahead of PM Narendra Modi’s Rome visit for G20 Summit.

What are Italy’s priorities for G20 under its presidency & how has it been coordinating with India?
Over the past months, the Italian G20 presidency has worked to address, identify and implement shared responses to global challenges. In particular, Italy’s presidency focused on identifying the tools for an equitable recovery post COVID19, seizing the opportunity to “build back better” and learning from shared experiences through the use of innovative tools.


Within the three pillars “People, Planet and Prosperity”, we are taking the lead in ensuring a common response to the pandemic and building up resilience to future health-related shocks. We are also looking beyond the crisis, towards ensuring a rapid recovery that addresses people’s needs by focusing on inequalities, on women’s empowerment, on the younger generations and on protecting the most vulnerable. In this context, multilateralism is key to address global challenges in a holistic approach.

With this in mind, Italy and India have been working closely together and we truly thank India for the support given to our Presidency. We are confident that this cooperation will continue in the years ahead and will be further enhanced once India will enter the Troika next December 1st. We will continue building together on the work carried out so far.

Will this G20 declaration suggest measures for global economic recovery?
Economic recovery is at the heart of the G20 Italian Presidency and will therefore be one of the key topics of the final declaration. As you know, our Presidency has identified three, interconnected, pillars of action: “People, Planet, Prosperity”.

Nowadays, the first precondition for prosperity is the eradication of COVID all over the world. In this light, the Summit and the declaration will emphasise the role of vaccines and reiterate the commitment of the G20 members to renovate the efforts for increasing production and sharing of doses and cures. After this immediate needs our aim should be that of building “a better normal”.

This entails promoting a new model of growth, more equitable and inclusive for all the world population and more sustainable for the environment. This is what the Italian Presidency aims at by having “People” and “Planet” at its core. In such a framework, the fight against climate change, energy transition and the protection of ecosystems all play a crucial role, as they not only are a prerequisite for the new growth model that we have in mind (and a trigger for more prosperity), but an urgent necessity for the future of humanity. In this context, we are also working to facilitate MSME’s access to global trade and inclusion in the global markets, as recognized in the last G20 Trade Minister’s meeting in Sorrento. We indeed believe that global markets are an important source of growth for MSMEs which, among other things, play a crucial role in meeting the sustainable development goals.

What are Italy’s ideas for COP-26 which it is co-sponsoring with UK?
Italy in 2021 is a key player on the multilateral stage, not we hold the G20 Presidency, but we are co-hosting with the UK, the Pre-Cop26 at the beginning of October, in view of the upcoming COP 26 in Glasgow. In our vision, Italy is particularly committed to reaffirming and strengthening its role as a virtuous, ambitious and supportive country in order to tackle urgent challenges such as climate change.

In this spirit, as partner for COP26, Italy hosted just few weeks ago in Milan a series of significant preparatory events to the Conference, with the aim of offering ministers representing the main negotiating parties an opportunity to informally discuss key political aspects. Milan has seen as well the first ever event completely devoted to youth on climate change,“Youth4Climate: Driving Ambition”, convened by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, in partnership with the UK.

We deem it crucial to promote the engagement of the young generations in the decision making processes, making young people responsible and recognizing them as key players in climate action. The event allowed the 400 young participants from all around the world the chance to be among the relevant actors involved in the global climate action (together with civil society, the business world, the academy, local authorities and regional institutions).

Being climate and nature at the heart of our multilateral agenda in 2021, Italy, along with the UK, has prioritised finance and technology agendas through its role of COP26 co-president and G20 President. In this regards, the G20 Energy-Climate in Naples marked a noteworthy step in order to “reaffirm the commitment made by developed countries, to the goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion per year by 2020 and annually through 2025 to address the needs of developing countries, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, and those funds may come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral, and multilateral, including alternative sources”.

What role do you envisage for Italy and India in the Indo-Pacific region?
Together with the European Union Institutions and Member States, Italy sees the Indo-Pacific as an increasingly pivotal area in the world geography. We share the same vision as India of an open and free Indo-Pacific and is ready to increase its engagement in order to promote democracy, the rule of law, human rights, open markets and a stable trading environment, as well as common goals like fight against climate change and biodiversity preservation.

India has a key role to play in the region, as it stands at its core and is one of its major actors, and Italy is working in order to strengthen and widen the bilateral partnership in areas that are coherent with the abovementioned vision, such us energy transition.