Italian group visited for chip talks, minister says – Taipei Times

KEY PARTNER:
Italy has some strategic advantages in the chip industry, and trade with Taiwan is expected to increase this year, the representative office in Rome said

An Italian delegation visited Taiwan to discuss potential cooperation in the semiconductor sector, Italian Minister for Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso said on Friday.

“I sent a ministry task force in Taiwan, and one also in Seoul, to discuss and illustrate our plan on semiconductors,” Urso said in Pavia, Italy.

Urso said the mission was mostly technical, a sign that Italy is trying to keep the economic and diplomatic tracks as separate as possible.

Photo: Bloomberg

Taiwan has planned to invest about US$400 million in Italy’s chip industry, the Taipei Representative Office in Rome said.

“On semiconductors, Italy has some strategic advantages compared with other EU countries, including manufacturing capacity and research and development,” office head Vincent Tsai (蔡允中) said in an interview.

Tsai, who was appointed to the role in January, said that trade between the two countries increased 13 percent last year, and there are plans to further boost it with the opening of a new representative office later this year in Milan, Italy’s business capital.

China and Taiwan are key trading partners with Italy, which is the third-largest importer of goods from China in the EU, and the fourth-largest exporter of goods to the country, which is a key export destination for luxury brands crucial for its industry.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who came to power less than a year ago, is leaning toward pulling out of an agreement to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has funded US$900 billion in infrastructure projects globally, people familiar with the government’s thinking said.

Italian officials raised the prospect of withdrawal in talks with Taiwan this week, Bloomberg reported.

Italy is the only G7 country that signed up to the infrastructure plan. The deal agreed in 2019 under then-Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte has not led to deeper integration between Italy and China compared with other EU nations.

Italy’s hawkish turn complicates Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) effort to drive a wedge between European countries eager to retain economic relations with Beijing, and the US, which is implementing increasingly confrontational policies. This puts Italy and the EU in a delicate position between the two superpowers.

“Italy is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and what to do with the cooperation pact is a real diplomatic conundrum for Meloni,” Mercator Institute for China Studies analyst Francesca Ghiretti said in an interview. “Renewing it would send a very difficult message to Washington, but not renewing it would put a strain in relations with China.”