The official three-day visit of Roberto Fico , president of the Chamber of Deputies and leading exponent of the 5 Star Movement, to Washington begins today (Tuesday 2 November, ed). According to what has been reconstructed by Formiche.net, the journey is designed along two lines: to strengthen the progressive axis between Italy and the United States and to deepen some themes that have always been on the agenda of the president such as new forms of democratic participation, rights and sustainability. urban. THE AGENDA AND MEETINGS
President Fico will meet Bill Nelson today, a NASA administrator and former Democratic Party senator, will visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the National Air and Space Museum and the National Archives, where the United States Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights are kept.
Wednesday is the most political day. In the morning he will be received on Capitol Hill by Nancy Pelosi , speaker of the House of Representatives, who recently went to Rome for the opening ceremony of the pre-Cop26 of the Parliaments. Then he will have a meeting with the leadership of the House, therefore with the group leaders of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and other representatives. In the afternoon, however, he will meet Kathy Castor, President of the Commission on Climate Change. Finally, meetings with some exponents of the German Marshall Fund think tank and subsequently with some representatives of the Italian community.
On Thursday he will attend the celebrations for National Unity Day and Armed Forces Day. She then she will visit Arlington Monumental Cemetery with the Changing of the Guard ceremony and the deposition of the Crown to the Fallen. You will close the morning with a meeting with representatives of another prestigious think tank, the Brookings Institution chaired by John Allen , former commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. In the afternoon, a visit to the Center for American Progress and a meeting on Capitol Hill with David Cicilline are scheduled, dem deputy of Italian descent, son of the “mafia lawyer” John Francis Cicilline , first gay mayor of a state capital (Providence, Rhode Island), vice president of the Caucus of Progressives and member of the European Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Commission. THE THEMES OF THE VISIT
Here is the first of the two directions of President Fico’s visit. Thinking also about the future of the 5 Star Movement and its relations with the Democratic Party, the meeting with the speaker Pelosi and the one at the Center for American Progress arrive a few days after the meeting of the Global Progress Network in Rome, on the sidelines of the G20 , on the initiative of the secretary dem Enrico Letta– an event whose engine was the Center for American Progress, which of the three think tanks on the agenda of the Speaker of the House is undoubtedly the most politically aligned (just think that it was founded by the iron Clintonite John Podesta ). As for the second director, however, it is necessary to look at the meetings at the Brookings Institution and the German Marshall Fund, internationally prestigious study centers that offer programs dedicated to issues that are dear to President Fico since, in 2005, he was one of the founders of Naples of one of the 40 “Amici di Beppe Grillo” meetups, on which the 5 Star Movement was born. THE ITALY-UNITED STATES RELATIONSHIP
Finally, looking at the agenda of President Fico in Washington, there are several institutional opportunities. As a demonstration of a harmony between Italy and the United States, not only between governments (as demonstrated by the agreement between Prime Minister Mario Draghi and US President Joe Biden , the conversation between Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and the secretary of American state Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the G20 in Rome and the recent mission to Boston and Washington by the Minister of Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti ) but also at the institutional level under the gaze of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella .THE INTERVIEW WITH “FORMICHE.NET” AFTER THE VICTORY OF BIDEN It
is useful in this context to reread the interview given by President Fico to Formiche.net almost a year ago, a few days after the US presidential elections. He defined Joe Biden ‘s victory as an opportunity to open a new era in relations between Europe and the United States. Here are two passages from that interview.
I believe that the signs of a discontinuity will be perceptible on several fronts. Starting with the commitment on the environmental side and a different approach in the management of the migratory phenomenon and in the relationship with all minorities, some of which have gone through really hard and distressing years. After all, some measures in this sense have already been announced by Biden, such as the accession to the Paris agreement and the overcoming of the Muslim ban. On the international level, both a return of the USA to the multilateralist approach and a resumption, in renewed forms of collaboration, of transatlantic relations are taken for granted. I believe that both of these guidelines are more necessary than ever in the face of the enormous global challenges we are called to face together: the pandemic, climate change,
With Nancy Pelosi – whom I sent a letter of congratulations on her re-election to the House of Representatives a few days ago – there have been several occasions for discussion in recent years, both bilaterally and in the context of the meetings of the Presidents of the G7 Parliaments. We have developed an excellent relationship and shared reasonings both with respect to issues of common interest – I am thinking, for example, of the social consequences engendered by climate change – and more recently during the sad period of violence following the assassination of George Floyd, and above all with respect to the approach to be followed in contrasting the spread of the pandemic and the importance that parliamentary diplomacy can play even in this historical juncture. On these issues I found a passionate and tenacious interlocutor in front of me,
