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French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni set aside years of fractious relations Thursday to deepen cooperation on defence, space and energy, while announcing plans to build a multinational force to replace the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon.
The two leaders met at the Villa Eilenroc, a 19th-century estate overlooking the Mediterranean in the resort town of Antibes, for their first formal bilateral summit since a strategic alliance treaty between France and Italy entered into force in 2021, elevating ties to a level comparable to those between Paris and Berlin.
The summit came at a politically charged moment for both leaders. Meloni, who has long cast herself as a bridge between Europe and Washington, has recently broken with U.S. President Donald Trump over what she described as his "constant, unprovoked attacks."
Macron, for his part, signaled that Europe still values its transatlantic partnership, telling reporters, "We want to keep the Americans on our side," while cautioning that "there will likely be changes, new twists and turns" ahead in the relationship with Washington.
Macron, a pro-European centrist, and Meloni, who leads a coalition of right and far-right parties, have for years represented the ideological fault lines running through European politics. Thursday's show of warmth was nonetheless deliberate. Macron referred to his Italian counterpart as "Dear Giorgia" and, with a smile, told reporters, "We all live under the same climate, it is warm. And there is nothing glacial anymore." Meloni described their dynamic as that of "serious people who talk politics."
The leaders of the European Union's second- and third-largest economies acknowledged they do not agree on every issue. Italy's push to establish migrant detention centres outside the EU remains a point of friction with Paris, and Meloni, unlike Macron, opposes deploying Italian troops to Ukraine in a post-war security arrangement to provide guarantees to Kyiv. Both governments, however, are aligned in opposing the EU's proposed free trade agreement with South America's Mercosur bloc.
One of the summit's most significant announcements was a joint call to establish a multinational coalition to take over from UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, whose mandate the UN Security Council voted last August to end on December 31, 2026, under pressure from Washington.
UNIFIL has served as a buffer between Lebanon and Israel since 1978, though its presence has not prevented repeated rounds of conflict. Macron said the two countries want to launch a new arrangement "in coordination with the European Union and the United Nations, to strengthen Lebanon's sovereignty and that of its armed forces." Meloni added that "Italy and France can absolutely make a difference."
On the security front, the two delegations signed a five-year defence roadmap focusing on cooperation around Aster missiles and SAMP/T air defence systems.
The leaders also reaffirmed their backing for a planned European satellite project designed to compete with Elon Musk's Starlink network. "In space, Franco-Italian cooperation is historic in Europe and must remain so," Macron said.
The commercial dimension was underscored at a parallel Franco-Italian economic forum in the nearby town of Le Cannet, where Herve Derrey, chief executive of Thales Alenia Space, noted that with ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, "space has become absolutely central for the military."
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