Conservative premier Giorgia Meloni on Monday welcome her centre-left British counterpart Keir Starmer's first official visit to Italy, which she said confirmed "extremely solid collaboration" between their countries.
“I am very pleased to welcome Prime Minister Starmer to Rome for the first time," Meloni told reporters at the end of talks with Starmer at Villa Pamphili in Rome.
"The visit confirms an extremely solid collaboration, our governments are working side by side to seek long-term, structural responses to the challenges of our time," Meloni said.
Migration is believed to have topped the agenda at Meloni and Starmer's talks with Starmer having expressed previous interest in the two asylum-seeker centres Italy is controversially building in Albania to process the claims of migrants rescued by Italy at sea.
"I recognize the importance of Italy as a leader in Europe and on the world stage, in the G7 and in Nato," Starmer told reporters.
"We are working together for security, stability and growth but also democracy, justice and the rule of law,” Starmer underlined.
Starmer thanked Meloni ”for such strong leadership, especially over Ukraine," since Russia's full-scale invasion of the former Soviet Republic in February 2022.
Britain "is "beginning a new era of relations" with the European Union, and it is important that I have come here at the beginning of my term. It's a statement of intent,” Starmer underlined.
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