The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, accompanied by Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, is on an official visit to Tunisia until tomorrow, 17 May 2012. Napolitano will be meeting President Moncef Marzouki, with whom he will discuss the most important issues on the bilateral relations and international agendas. President Napolitano will also be seeing the Head of Government, Hamadi Jebali. He will then have a discussion with the President of the National Constituent Assembly, Mustapha Ben Jaafar, and give a speech to the Assembly, the first European Head of State to do so.
The Head of State’s visit to Tunisia, like the initiatives carried out to date by Italian diplomacy, is intended to encourage the transformation in Tunisia, which is an example of moderation for other countries that have embarked on their own “Arab Springs”. As part of this support, Italy is paying close attention to the consolidation of Tunisia’s democratic process, with its new constitution and freely elected institutions.
Speaking in an interview with the Tunisian weekly “Realities”, Napolitano commented that “the Tunisian people has taken its destiny as a democratic, pluralist society into its own hands, and of that it can be proud. The free elections to the Constituent Assembly have paved the way to choosing a representative institutional model through an in-depth and transparent debate”. The interview is published on the website of the Quirinal Palace, home to the Presidency of the Italian Republic.
Consolidating bilateral relations
The Head of State’s visit will strengthen the foundations for optimal bilateral relations. This will be a concrete visit, as the package of initiatives for Tunisia demonstrates: aid credits amounting to 200 million euros to support Tunisians small and medium-sized enterprises and for public sector procurement. Money well spent, is we consider that 700 Italian companies currently operate in the country, and that tourism is experiencing a boom.
President Napolitano will also visit an exhibition of paintings and drawings from the Tunisian period of Maurizio Valenzi, a Member of Parliament and Mayor of Naples who dies in 2009. The exhibition, hosted at the Italian Cultural Institute, was curated by the Director of the Institute and by Lucia Valenzi.
