Giorgia Meloni will be honoured by Elon Musk on 23 September. The context is the Global Citizen Award, an award presented annually by the Atlantic Council during the UN General Assembly. Its purpose is to honour “a wide range of global citizens, from heads of state to world-renowned artists. By recognising their achievements we encourage others to emulate their efforts to improve the state of the world’.
International standing
The Italian Prime Minister is therefore regarded as a role model to be followed: what is decisive in receiving the award is certainly the role of international mediator that the Prime Minister has certainly played over and over again in her months of government. Her international standing is undoubtedly one of her strengths, making her a reliable and listened-to leader in all the meetings she has attended. Dozens and dozens of heads of state and government have met with her since the beginning of her term of office, and with many of them she has opened a very close dialogue on major issues, in the interests of Italians but never encroaching on the rights and interests of others. Meloni’s last official visit was a few weeks ago, when the Italian premier met her Chinese counterpart Li Qiang and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But there have been many other leaders met: the successful G7 organised in Puglia and chaired by the president of Fratelli d’Italia, one of the most attended in history, the first to host the Pontiff, on a topic, moreover, as delicate as artificial intelligence, will have weighed heavily. Moreover, her stature is also felt in Europe, where Giorgia Meloni has been able to enforce Italian demands and interests: a clear example is the action she has taken on immigration, with her new approach that has been welcomed by the European Union, the Commission and many other Member States that had also expressed their opposition to a certain hard-line vision against the illegal trafficking of human beings. This demonstrates the goodness of the policies exported by Fratelli d’Italia.
The meeting with Musk
In the motivations for the award, we read that ‘the Italian premier has established herself as an important interlocutor on the international stage‘. Accompanying Meloni will be prominent figures from various nations, UN ambassadors, and other leaders such as Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Ghanaian president, and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, her Greek counterpart, will receive the award. Other leaders who have received the award in the past include Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, and Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor. As mentioned, the prize will be presented by Elon Musk himself, with whom, as anticipated by the Bloomberg agency, the premier will hold a closed-door meeting on various topics, such as space and artificial intelligence. Meloni can also boast excellent relations with the Tesla and X patron: just think of the entrepreneur’s guestappearance at the lastAtreju election, last December, during which Musk spoke on the issue of the birth rate and carried his son. The award, therefore, will certainly be a source of pride for Giorgia Meloni, but it must be a recognition that makes our nation proud, because it will only be the latest proof of the reborn consideration that Italy can boast in the international sphere.
