NEW YORK – The spotlight is all on her: Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni is the protagonist of the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly underway in New York while we are writing this article. Indeed, the President of the Italian Council of Ministers was awarded the Global Citizen Award 2024, a prestigious award given every year by the Atlantic Council: the award ceremony is scheduled for 7 pm, today, during a gala organized for the occasion. But the news is double: in fact, not only Meloni is awarded, but she receives the prix directly from the hands of Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, X (Twitter) and SpaceX (and a great supporter of Donald Trump in the presidential elections USA).

With the award – this year also awarded to the President of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotaks, and to the Vice-Chairwoman of the South Korean holding CJ Group, Miky Lee -, the Atlantic Council intends to recognize to Meloni “her pioneering role as the first female Head of Government in Italy, her strong support for the European Union and the transatlantic alliance as well as for her presidency of the G7 in 2024”.

After the public meeting at the Atlantic Council, Musk and Meloni will also have a closed-door conversation to talk about investment opportunities in the artificial intelligence and space sectors. And here is the third news: the interest of the Italian Premier and her government in possible – and huge – “spatial” and technological investments in the BelPaese.

Moreover, already today (on the sidelines of the work of the 79th UN General Assembly), Meloni herself held a series of meetings with representatives of the innovation sector and in particular with the CEOs of Google-Alphabet (Sundar Pichai) , Motorola (Greg Brown), Open AI (Sam Altman). At the center of the talks, as reported in an in-depth article by Startmag.it (you can read it here), there are the prospects of global technological and IT development with particular reference to Artificial Intelligence, the opportunities to be seized and the risks to be prevented. The investment plans of the various groups in Italy were also discussed and what initiatives could be adopted, also in light of Italy’s strategic position at the center of the Mediterranean, to increase Italian competitiveness in the highest technology sectors, in particular by leveraging Italian excellence in higher education and research.

The Italian government’s interest in the world of technology therefore explains in some way why Meloni herself would have specifically asked to receive the prize from Musk’s hands. It would therefore not be (only) an “endorsement” for Donald Trump, but a specific Italian interest: the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, took care of dispelling any doubts, in an interview with Corriere della Sera in which he defined the decision as purely “entrepreneurial”, rather than political. “The government is neutral on the American campaign. We have always worked well with all presidents, tying our relationship with the USA to one candidate would be suicidal. I met Harris and Trump, I worked well with Biden and Blinken” added Tajani.

Meanwhile, today Meloni spoke at the Future Summit within the UN general assembly, reiterating the Italian position on the reform of the Security Council, which cannot “prescind from the principles of equality, democracy and representativeness. The reform – explained the Prime Minister – makes sense if it is made for everyone and not just for some. We are not interested in creating new hierarchies and we do not believe that first-class and second-class nations exist. Nations exist, with their histories, their peculiarities and their citizens who all have the same rights because individuals are all born free and equal”. 

“We are living in a time of crisis, but crises always hide an opportunity – added the Prime Minister –, after all the word ‘crisis’ derives from the Greek crisis, which means choice, decision: crises force us to question ourselves, to take sides, they don’t allow you to hesitate. No state can govern the crises of our time, which is why Italy is a staunch supporter of multilateralism and its most representative institution which is the UN, in which every voice is heard: the place where we are called to learn, to understand each other, respect each other”.

And, of course, she talked about AI: “If Artificial Intelligence will be used to further divide the global balance, then the scenarios would be potentially catastrophic. Politics must guarantee that artificial intelligence remains controlled by humans and keeps humans at the center. These are all matters that we address in this pact, and they are all matters that Italy wanted to place at the center of the agenda of its year of G7 Presidency. We must never forget that the decisions we make today will be the world our children will live in tomorrow. As William Stanley Merwin, one of the main post-war American poets, said, we ‘are the echo of the future’ “.

In the video above, Giorgia Meloni during her speech at the UN (from the YouTube channel of the Italian Presidency of the Council – https://www.youtube.com/@palazzochigi)