Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte expressed concern on Friday over the Treaty of Aachen, a friendship agreement between Germany and France signed earlier in January, in particular, its provisions regarding Berlin’s prospects for becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC).
“[That provision] is not a legal obligation, but a foreign policy goal that squeezes out Europe… It has always been supposed that [the seat in the UNSC] will be granted to Europe, hasn’t it?… The UNSC represents a structure where the WWII victors have a veto. Did Germany lose or win WWII?” Conte said in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel signed a friendship treaty on Tuesday in the German city of Aachen, which defined granting Germany permanent membership in the UNSC as a priority of the French-German diplomacy.