Italy’s geopolitical ascendancy is prefigured around developing closer hydrocarbon ties to Libya in order to create an “enlarged Mediterranean” — the ultimate prize of Italian policy in North Africa.

Enrico Mattei is the industrialist credited with the 1953 inception of Italy’s Ente nazionale idrocarburi or Eni, for whom Giorgia Meloni’s Italian administration has named its “flagship” strategy for Africa. Speaking on the sixty-first anniversary of Mattei’s death in October 2023, Prime Minister Meloni lauded the “geopolitical projection” of the founder’s commercial strategy.

The stifled Libyan interventions of Meloni’s predecessors have been held up as an indicator of Italy’s diminished influence in the Mediterranean sphere. Notwithstanding, Rome’s newest venture into development diplomacy can advance its pull as a unilateral actor in the region.

Priorities for the Mattei Plan

The Mattei Plan contemplates a funding commitment of €5.5 billion, constituted by approximately €3 billion from the Italian Climate Fund and an additional €2.5 billion already allocated to development cooperation, to be applied through a variety of instruments including debt-for-development swaps and both public-private and multilateral initiatives, with pilot projects already underway in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco.

Since the Plan’s inception, its scope has been expanded, including covering additional sub-Saharan partner states. Rome has acknowledged the regional impact of stabilization in Libya and in December entered into a series of cooperation commitments with Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s Tripoli administration, However, as yet, no new commitments to the Libyan oil and gas sector, or the energy sector at large, have been announced.

Energy and pipeline security continue to top Rome’s list of........

© The National Interest