One month after his election as President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella today makes his first official trip. The Head of State will be first in Berlin and then in Brussels for a two-day launch of diplomatic relations for his seven-year term.
During the day, Mattarella will be in Berlin for a meeting with the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Joachim Gauck, who had invited him the day after his inauguration at the Quirinale. Immediately afterwards, the President will go to the Berlin Wall, for a moment dedicated to the memory of the recent past. The visit will continue with an interview with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In the evening the trip to Brussels, where tomorrow morning Mattarella will meet the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, the Italian parliamentarians of the Assembly, the High Representative for EU Foreign Policy Federica Mogherini and the president of the European Council Donald Tusk. In the afternoon he held an audience with the Belgian royals and face to face with the president of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker.
On Thursday, however, it will be Matteo Renzi's turn to leave Italy for official commitments. The Prime Minister will go to Moscow for the first time, to the Kremlin, where he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he will talk about Libya, Italian-Russian trade, Ukraine, energy sources.
On the first front, Renzi will probe Putin's willingness for a UN resolution to lift the arms embargo aimed at the recognized Libyan government, allowing an anti-ISIS naval blockade and entrusting an explicit mandate to Egypt, but with the external support of France and Italy.
Furthermore, from Palazzo Chigi they let it be known that the Italian premier will lay a flower on the spot where Boris Nemzov, one of the leaders of the Russian opposition and deputy prime minister at the time of Yeltsin's presidency, was killed on Friday evening. The crime that aroused suspicions around Putin.
