“Italian Cooperation is no longer the ‘sum-total’ of the single cooperation agencies. Today we are an ‘Italian Cooperation System’ and we must tackle major issues such as the big challenges linked to developing as a very closely-knit team,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Angelino Alfano, told Laura Frigenti, the director of the Italian Development Cooperation Agency (AICS), in a meeting this morning.
Minister Alfano added: “The Cooperation System is the noblest component of foreign policy, the one which is most authentically motivated by opening up and wanting to understand others in order to pursue together the most significant responses at global level.”
He went on: “We must work together to assure the best approach to implement Reforms; indeed, Cooperation is not an exact science, in which every problem is addressed through defined assumptions, but is founded on human partnerships and relations, which always leaves room for improvement.”
He concluded: “Today, in the headquarters of this Agency, allow me to reaffirm my confidence in Director Frigenti and my sympathy and encouragement for her strong commitment to assure the Agency’s growing operating capacities. In its first year of operation, the AICS, even if still understaffed and at the outset of its activities, has succeeded to assure the continuation of cooperation projects and the launch of new initiatives in line with the priority objectives established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. I hope that the recruitment through a public competition of 60 new officials may put the Agency in the best possible conditions to successfully achieve the important tasks assigned to it by Law No. 125.”