Rome x Riyadh, Giorgia Meloni x Mohammed bin Salman to win the Expo 2030 site. Today’s Financial Times dedicates an article to the dispute between the two capitals – the third candidate is the South Korean Busan, but her chances would be limited – entry live in recent days on the occasion of the Assembly of Bié in Paris, with a view to voting at the end of November. A fight that the British newspaper summarizes as that between “the deep pockets of Saudi Arabia and the soft power of Italy”.
For MBS, winning the Expo 2030 site would be part of a global effort to increase the influence of the kingdom, which seeks to reduce economic dependence on fossil fuels, position itself as a financial hub and expand the tourism industry and also that linked pilgrimages to Mecca, recalls the FT, according to which, after having used 650 billion dollars from the sovereign wealth fund to buy football clubs and players like Cristiano Ronaldo and to influence world golf, the Expo would be “another brilliant prize ” for the MBs. Who, according to critics, actually wants to use these events to clean up his country’s image after the murder of journalist Khamal Khashoggi, killed in 2018 by Saudi security agents at the consulate in Istanbul.
The motivations for Rome’s candidacy are of a completely different nature, which aims to host an inclusive and inspiring universal exhibition, according to the words of the president of the organizing committee Giampiero Massolo, for whom an event of this type should not be just a tool for ” promote a single country or a single person”. “We are convinced that the exhibitions serve to show what the world can achieve if countries work together,” said the former ambassador.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
