Good evening everyone. Thank you for this invitation and for this great initiative. My thanks to Esma, Dario and all the Association’s board members. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise, as well as to congratulate you, because I must confess that I was not familiar with many of the Association’s activities, providing a much more complete account of Italy for people who learn about what happens here through your work.
My sincere congratulations, and I also wish you all the best in your new headquarters. I don’t know what Silvio Berlusconi must be thinking from up there about the fact that this “bunch of communists”, as he would have put it, is moving to Palazzo Grazioli, but such is life ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for this evening, which I believe to be a very meaningful and significant event. I fear I may disappoint you somewhat. I just listened to your President’s wonderful speech and I know that on these occasions the President of the Council of Ministers is expected to deliver a light-hearted and entertaining address. I wasn’t even light-hearted at the age of 15, let alone after being President of the Council of Ministers for 16 months. In addition, you invite me on the day when I lose the elections in Sardinia, and I’m also doing Lent so can’t even drown my sorrows in alcohol. So, objectively speaking, this is not the best day to expect me to be fun and cheerful. That’s just how things worked out. In any case, I think this is a great initiative because, aside from my speech and the other official addresses, this is an opportunity to get to know each other as people. This is important for all of us in order to do our jobs better.

I have always thought that, in order to understand politics, as is the case if you want to understand history and literature, you have to try and understand the key players: what went through their minds? Who were they? The same is true for journalists. When you read a piece of commentary, when I as a politician read a piece of commentary, if I know who has written it then I am able to understand and interpret it better. So, having the opportunity and some time to get to know each other can also allow us all to make a more complete judgment and have a franker relationship. I believe this is very important; I think that trying to understand people can allow all of us to do a better job. I think it gives me the opportunity to better explain who I am and what I do, and I think it gives you that opportunity (and allow me to say that, if you have been sent to be correspondents in Italy, so to try and explain Italian politics to people far from here, when not even Italian politicians understand Italian politics, then either your editors hate you or objectively speaking they hold you in very high regard, because it is not an easy thing to do).
However, this is also why getting to know each other and understanding people better can help to better interpret reality.
I think this is all the more true in my case because, as you know, I have a ‘black belt’ in being stereotyped and labelled. I have been depicted in all ways possible and imaginable but actually, sometimes, once people get to know me, they discover that the reality is different from the one that has been depicted and they change their minds: sometimes for the worse, but very often for the better. This hasn’t been difficult for me: when you’re presented as an alien, a monster, and then you come along and show that you only have two eyes instead of six, you already make a positive impression. This, however, requires mutual acquaintance.

And so, above all, I can try to talk to you about who I am. Allow me then to start this sort of ‘psychoanalysis session’ of ours this evening by telling you about who I think I am, beyond the fact that I am President of the Council of Ministers. I’ll start by saying I’m Giorgia, good evening. Some would say here “I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m Italian, I’m Christian”, but that’s all old news so to speak; we already know all that. That aside, I’m not sure how many people know but I am a journalist like you, and I am above all a person who has spent two thirds of their existence committed to politics. After thirty years of political engagement, I still consider politics to be the most extraordinary form of civic engagement there is. However, I never imagined I would get to where I am, and perhaps I got here for that exact reason: I don’t love being here, and I could well remain for longer than others precisely for that reason.
A long-standing colleague of mine says that my catchphrase is: “we’re all going to die anyway”. That’s right, I am not an optimistic person, and I always see the glass half empty.
However, as I am always able to imagine the worst-case scenario (and fate is normally much more magnanimous than I am), I am also able to address all other scenarios, because I’ve prepared myself for the worst.
None of my pipe dreams have come true. I wanted to be a singer, but I am tone-deaf. I wanted to play for the Italian national volleyball team, but I’m too short. I wanted to meet Michael Jackson, but he died too soon. These dreams did not include becoming President of the Council of Ministers, because I’m too realistic for that. Michael Jackson taught me English; not many people know that I learned English above all because I loved music and wanted to understand what the lyrics were saying. This has helped me a lot, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Also in this regard, I think the ability to really know who you have in front of you can create many opportunities and possibilities. World leaders are just people trying to do the best they can for their nation.
If you can get a good understanding of who you have in front of you, if you can create empathy, and language can of course help you with that, then you can build much more solid relationships than when they are ‘filtered’.

In addition, I am also a person who, as you know, is not scared of speaking their mind. I would sometimes have liked to be different, but I am not scared to say what I think. I’m not scared of taking responsibility, of paying the price for that.
I am loyal. For me, if I make a commitment, then maintaining that commitment is a matter of principle. I am guilty of many of the seven deadly sins, almost all of them, but not the most insidious and the most devastating one for politicians: vanity, which I believe is the one that causes much more damage in this field. Despite my face, which more or less always looks like this, I am actually not always angry; this is my natural expression when I’m concentrating. To prove this to Ignazio La Russa once, I showed him a class photograph of mine from the third grade of primary school and I had exactly the same expression (my role prevents me from telling you how I was holding my hands).
So, despite this scowling expression of mine, I’m actually a person who loves to laugh, and I especially and also love to laugh at myself. I consider myself to be a decent person, a good person.
However, I also know that you should never underestimate the potential nastiness of a good person who is forced to be mean, and so I should also not be underestimated. The things that make me most angry are disloyalty, humiliation and losing at the ‘burraco’ card game, which is something that has been happening to me quite a lot recently. This year therefore hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts overall.

The thing I love the most after my daughter is this nation, and so it obviously makes me angry when it is disrespected. Allow me to say a few more serious things here, but I honestly won’t bore you. This evening’s event doesn’t deserve to be weighed down, despite me having had one of those days.
I believe this also helps to understand a lot about the policies we are trying to advance. As a patriot, I suffered when Italy would always be somewhat looked down upon and was sometimes considered not to be very serious or reliable. When I became President of the Council of Ministers, the first goal I set myself was to give this nation back its credibility, to do my best to ensure this nation could be considered credible and reliable, to enable a narrative to be overturned that had sometimes been used instrumentally: that Italy is all about spaghetti and mandolins, that Italy is not to be trusted.
This is somewhat of a guiding principle for the policies I am trying to pursue, also with regard to foreign policy, which is something you follow: as far as I am concerned, positions should be taken and maintained not on the basis of changing moods, but rather on the basis of what is right. This applies to Ukraine and the Middle East, for example, quite simply because that is what distinguishes leaders from followers.

I think there are two approaches to politics: there are those who do politics to get votes, and there are those who get votes to do politics. These are two very different things. If you are a leader, you must be able to convince the majority of citizens that your vision is the right one. If you chase after other people’s moods, then you won’t be able to lead the way. This is the case for foreign policy. As you know, this year we have the Presidency of the G7, and you know the themes better than I do; there is one that concerns you both as people and as professionals, as the Association’s President also mentioned, which is artificial intelligence. Look, we can talk about press freedom as much as we want, and we all defend the freedom of the press, but the problem here is that the press risks being eliminated, and if there is no press anymore, you unfortunately can’t defend its freedom either.
We know that artificial intelligence is a great opportunity if it is governed; if it is not governed, it can become a detonator. We are used to progress optimising human skills, but we were used to progress optimising physical skills, allowing men and women to focus on concept-based work and organisation. The risk is that this may no longer be the case. We are risking an impact on the labour market that involves highly qualified jobs and professions, such as journalism, and that can be devastating.
Artificial intelligence is one of the issues we will be making a focus for the G7, particularly with regard to its impact on the labour market.

This is the case for economic policy too, in relation to which we have tried to buy fewer scooters and devote ourselves more to citizens’ wages, to protecting households’ incomes, and there is some good news in this regard as well: the ‘BTP Valore’ [Italian government bond], dedicated to small-scale savers, has today raised EUR 6 billion on its first day; this is an all-time record, so if you have some spare money and want to invest it well, in a serious nation with a long-lasting government, then there is this option of the BTP Valore that I am taking the liberty of advertising.
All of this is clearly possible if there is the time to do it, which is what Italy has been missing, what Italian governments have been missing, and you know that very well: I can understand the point of view of those who have to deal with finally learning the names of all the ministers, only to then see them change again. This is what you were used to; sometimes even I couldn’t manage to remember all of them before they’d change again.

This nation needs stability; it needs stability to allow it to have a vision, to allow it to prioritise investments over current spending, to allow it to have a strategy, to allow it to govern the great economic powers, to allow it to govern bureaucracy.
This is above all done with reforms. We have proposed a constitutional reform, which has been met with some accusations. The other day I heard an American observer (and a very famous one at that) mention the reform regarding the role of the President of the Council of Ministers, recalling Mussolini, because it would be possible to have a majority with few votes.
I would just like to point out that this is what already happens in many other democracies: take France, for example, where there is a form of presidentialism according to which, if you get 18% in the first round and win the second round, then you can govern the nation. So, these interpretations sometimes seem bit forced to me.
What I would like to do is simply ensure that citizens are the ones to choose who governs Italy: democracy. And, if the government chosen by citizens falls, then there are new elections: democracy. I would therefore like to create stability and give citizens a more significant role in defining their governments, because if we manage to do this, it will also make your jobs easier, because the ministers will remain the same for at least five years and we will achieve more results as we won’t have to start from scratch every 18 months, because that is what has ruined this nation. I’m boring, I know; what can I do? I’ve always been boring, I have been all my life, so I’m much more comfortable with my boring things.

And, just to be clear, I won’t be dancing this evening as it’s not really the right day for it, but at least let me say thank you for the good omen, because it was only after you’d invited me to this dinner that you told me that, two days after Mario Draghi came here, you brought him unprecedented bad luck, so I’ll do my best to get away from this room as quickly as possible, in an attempt to stay in charge of governing this nation for a bit longer.
My sincere thanks to all of you, I wish you all the best with your work and thank you for this invitation.

[Courtesy translation]