Premier Giorgia Meloni stressed the need for balanced trade relations during her meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Monday, sources said.
"I think Italy can also play an important role in relations with the European Union to attempt to create trade relations that are as balanced as possible;" Meloni said, according to the sources.
Italy and the EU as a whole have a significant trade deficit with China.
"It's necessary to reason together about how to also guarantee trade that continues to be free because to do so we need, above all, the system of rules in which we operate to remain stable," said Meloni, who is on her first official trip to China since becoming Italy's first woman premier in 2022.
"So thank you for this opportunity. With this trip we are launching an action plan that we have signed with the (Chinese) government which defines the next three years of our bilateral cooperation with the clear aim of enhancing the work we have already done, but also of exploring new forms of cooperation working, at the same time, towards balancing trade relations".
Meloni is in Beijing after her government last year pulled out of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), having been the only G7 country to sign up in 2019 to the huge infrastructure programme that seeks to build of sort of modern-day Silk Road.
On Sunday she met with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang.
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