Jacques Serais / Photo credit: JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP 11:24 am, June 07, 2023

Emmanuel Macron receives this Wednesday in Paris the Italian President Sergio Matarella. The two leaders are due to visit at midday the exhibition "Naples in Paris" which is inaugurated at the Louvre. A meeting that comes at a time when in recent weeks Franco-Italian relations have been particularly tense.

The relationship between France and Italy on the road to rebibochage? Emmanuel Macron receives this Wednesday in Paris the Italian President Sergio Matarella. The two leaders are due to visit at midday the exhibition "Naples in Paris" which is inaugurated at the Louvre, before having lunch together. The arrival of Sergio Matarella is intended in particular to prepare another coming: that of the head of the Italian government, Giorgia Meloni.

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A remark by Gérald Darmanin that annoys

Officially this reception is done in the name of the "exceptional links" that unite France and Italy, but the reality is much more down to earth. The Franco-Italian relationship is going through a bad patch and Gérald Darmanin is not for nothing. Last May, the interior minister said that the head of the Italian government Giorgia Meloni was "incapable of solving migration problems". This had particularly annoyed, even annoyed, Rome.

The Italian President should therefore play his diplomacy to try to round the corners with Paris, even if Emmanuel Macron's entourage acts as if nothing had happened. "Everything is fine," says one adviser. "There has never been any problem between the President and Giorgia Meloni. The dissensions were not at their levels." Still, the head of the Italian government has never come to the Élysée since her accession to power last October. "It will come" assures a close to Emmanuel Macron, without however risking to give a date, or even a period.