Meloni and Takaichi Charting the Way Forward for Italy-Japan Relations

• Commentary Asia · Europe and Global Governance
  by Guido Alberto Casanova
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The Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is scheduled to make a new tour of Asia in the coming days which will take her to Oman, Japan and South Korea. Her mission underlines a growing interest in the Indo-Pacific for Italian diplomacy, which over the last few years has enhanced its engagement in this region. Italy is building ties with relevant partners in the region, but key among them is the relationship with Japan. Meloni will be in Tokyo on the 15-17 January for her second official visit in the country in about two years - the third if we consider her participation to the G7 summit in Hiroshima in 2023. This is already quite a relevant development for Italian diplomacy, as the frequency of Meloni's trips to Japan will place the country as her first diplomatic destination in East Asia and, at the same level, as a well-established European partner like Germany.

Meloni's trip was anticipated late last year, when the Italian PM had a phone call with the newly elected Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi and, on that occasion, they agreed to work for a meeting that would celebrate the 160th anniversary of bilateral relations, which falls precisely in 2026. Yet, the meeting will not be just about formal celebrations as the two G7 countries share a meaningful common agenda on the international stage.

Over the last few years, Italy and Japan have come to realise the growing inseparability of security between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, whereby stability in one theatre cannot be ensured unless the other is maintained stable. As a result, the governments in Tokyo and Rome are now perceiving a greater urge to address together what, under this new outlook, are increasingly shared challenges. Among such challenges the two countries explicitly recognise the Russian military aggressiveness or the North Korean nuclear programme. Additionally, Chinese economic coercion - although less explicitly mentioned - is also a key concern for both countries. Thus, the two items which will likely top the agenda in the diplomatic meeting are defence production and supply chain stability.

Defence production on the agenda

Over the last year, the defence industry capacity has come to the forefront of the political discussion in both Japan and Europe, where Italian defence companies are prominent players. Geopolitical confrontation with adversarial powers and the growing perception of strategic US unreliability under the Trump administration have pushed EU countries and Japan to focus their attention on self-defence, envisioning substantial increases in their defence spending. In this context, Europe and Japan have sought to link their respective defence industrial bases to explore the possibilities of deepening cooperation among key national contractors: Brussels and Tokyo will kick off this year a new EU-Japan Defence Industry Dialogue to coordinate private-public sector policies, and Japan - which has signed a security and defence partnership with the EU in 2024 - has proposed to join the EU's €150 billion framework, known as Security Action for Europe (SAFE), that would allow Japan to participate in European arms procurement.

Italy is set to be at the centre of European rearmament, given its strong domestic defence industrial base, and has a strong interest to join forces with technologically advanced Japanese companies and expand cooperation in this sector. Italy pays a great deal of attention to the technological upgrade opportunity of such collaboration, which not only presents the possibility to achieve greater technological sovereignty by developing cutting-edge products, but also bears clear benefits in terms of expanding the Italian industrial capacity and the employment. One such example, which is already in the workings, is the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), a multinational initiative to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter which has been led by the UK, Japan and Italy since 2022. This partnership is already at an advanced stage of preparation and the positive feedback it has received may be encouraging Meloni and Takaichi to use it as a blueprint for expanding defence industry cooperation beyond this specific programme.

On the industrial level, GCAP is an equal partnership among the British BAE System, the Italian Leonardo and the Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that in the next decade will deliver state-of-the-art combat aircraft to the air forces of the three countries. This was a major development for Japan-Italy relations, which will allow the two countries - together with the UK - to jointly develop and produce proprietary indigenous advanced military aircrafts. As the partnership has already been worked on for over three years, it looks unlikely that it will expand further to encompass new countries: this means that the stealth fighters could only be sold to the three countries given the current Japanese legal restrictions on defence exports, limiting the sales of lethal equipment only to the countries Japan co-developed them with. Yet, as the three defence contractors eye a bigger market for their high-tech product, there is space for a compromise as a two-tier scheme allowing the participation of third countries is envisioned and Japan is currently in the process of reviewing its self-imposed restrictions on weapons export.

A joint opportunity in supply chains and Africa

The other theme that will likely come up in the discussion between Meloni and Takaichi is economic security and the stability of supply chains in particular. Here too, cooperation between Italy and Japan fits into the wider trend the EU-Japan relations. Brussels and Tokyo were alarmed last spring when China decided to restrict the supply of its rare earths to the US as a response to the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. Trade weaponisation has been a top concern for both the EU and Japan for a while now. The renewed urgency gained by the matter throughout the last year has pushed the two middle powers to look for mutual support in finding new solutions to their critical mineral dilemma. During the EU-Japan summit held last July, then PM Shigeru Ishiba and President Ursula von der Leyen announced the launch of the "Competitiveness Alliance", a joint project to strengthen the resilience of supply chains for critical raw materials. The plan envisions co-development and co-production to stabilise procurement, in particular of rare earths, on which both the EU and Japan remain heavily dependent on China. On top of that, last month the EU accepted Japan's request to be included in Horizon Europe - the EU's €93.5 billion research programme -, a decision that will enable Japanese and European researchers to join forces and apply for funding to support joint innovative research projects: prominent targets of this collaboration will be the digital transition, food security and climate-neutral energy.

In this context, Italy could emerge as a key partner for Japan, which is currently seeking to diversify its rare earths supply amid growing tensions with China over Takaichi's remarks on the defence of Taiwan. Over the last two years, the Italian government has been promoting its own strategy for the development of African economies, known as the "Mattei Plan", which targets key sectors such as agriculture, energy and infrastructure. Meloni has presented the plan as a platform to organise and coordinate international cooperation in Africa. During the Italian G7 in 2024, Italy positioned itself as a bridge between Europe and Africa and has since worked to internationalise the plan at a both European and global level. Such efforts have been noted in Japan, which has established itself as an important partner for selected African nations. The two countries have therefore begun to explore the possibility of creating synergies between their respective approaches to the continent: last summer, in fact, the special envoy of the Italian foreign ministry was invited to take part at the ninth edition of the TICAD (Tokyo International Conference on African Development). This suggested a Japanese interest in promoting an African development which is multilateral and coordinated with other - local and global - stakeholders. As a continent rich in resources, Japan and Italy may find it fruitful to explore the opportunities to support the development of the critical material sector in African countries, with the aim of diversifying their own supply of natural resources.

Italy and the Indo-Pacific

While the growing interest of Italy for the region is quite self-evident, its engagement needs to be qualified and put in context because limitations persist in the approach adopted by the government in Rome. For instance, unlike other European powers, Italy still lacks an official Indo-Pacific strategic document guiding its foreign policy and establishing its priorities in the region - and it is unlikely to adopt one anytime soon.

As discussed above, since 2022 there has been a realisation that Europe and Asia have grown increasingly interconnected from a strategic point of view. To support regional stability and the free and open order in the Indo-Pacific, Italy has conducted naval diplomacy in the region with two missions led by the patrol vessel Morosini in 2023 and aircraft carrier Cavour in 2024, while it has also taken steps to make sure its navy can cooperate smoothly with local partners, as shown by the signing of the ACSA agreement with Japan that entered into force last year. Nevertheless, there are considerable limits to the Italian military deployment in the area and, from a political perspective, it would not be easy for Meloni to justify far-away commitments while Italy is facing security challenges much closer to home.

Furthermore, Italy is steadily diversifying its diplomatic portfolio in the Indo-Pacific, with relations with countries such as India and South Korea becoming increasingly important. But, as the Italian most important trade partner in Asia, China remains a core interlocutor, central to the Italian foreign policy in that area of the world. Notwithstanding the growing European and Japanese tensions with Beijing, the Meloni government is unlikely to openly adopt a more confrontational approach towards Beijing for the time being. When Italy withdrew from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2024, the aim was to "normalise" a relationship whose BRI framework had become a liability obstructing the advancement of bilateral ties. Meloni managed to de-politicise the relations, avoiding the disruptive effect that the withdrawal could have had on bilateral trade and securing a politically neutral space to engage in dialogue with Beijing. However, the cost of such a move has been a deliberate effort to avoid openly antagonising China and to display visibly amicable relations, at least formally, with high-level exchanges.

However, Italian foreign policy is not set in stone. Meloni and Takaichi have shown a remarkable level of political and personal affinity when they first met last year, and the two leaders share a common understanding of many of the critical challenges that their respective countries are facing. The upcoming meeting could be an opportunity to reshape the trajectory of Italian and Japanese foreign policy.