ROME (Reuters) – Italy will not be dependent on Chinese trade or technology and will safeguard any sector deemed as strategic, the new industry minister said on Thursday.
Adolfo Urso spoke when asked to comment on Germany’s recent decision to allow China’s Cosco to buy a stake in a Hamburg port terminal run by logistics firm HHLA – a company which also operates in the Italian port of Trieste.
“We will not put ourselves into the hands of the Chinese,” Urso told a journalist at a conference in Rome.
Urso is a senior figure in the Brothers of Italy, the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who was sworn in last week, and a former chair of an influential parliamentary committee on security.
“If others intend to move from energy dependency, and therefore from Russian power, to technological or to some extent commercial dependence on China, we will not follow them,” Urso added.
Italy in 2019 became the first major industrialised nation to sign up to China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a colossal project designed to improve Beijing’s trade reach.
Little has so far come of the pact. Ahead of Meloni’s election victory, she told Reuters she would not look to pursue the initiative.
Francesco Galietti, founder of political risk consultancy Policy Sonar, said Italy was moving faster than Germany in disengaging from Russia and China.
“Trieste and Hamburg are Siamese twins. They are two important ports, both located on strategic corridors connecting the cold seas to the Mediterranean,” he told Reuters.
Earlier this week, Urso said Meloni’s administration would continue to use anti-takeover legislation or so-called “golden powers” to ward off unwanted bids on industries deemed of strategic importance.
Former Prime Minister Mario Draghi repeatedly used golden powers to block attempts by China to extend its presence in the euro zone’s third-largest economy.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
