Bilateral Meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Transport of Italy – H. E. Matteo Salvini

Rome - Today the FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, met at FAO headquarters in Rome with H.E. Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport of Italy.

The Director-General thanked the Minister for Italy’s longstanding support to FAO as host country, and for the ongoing generous funding in support of improving the FAO premises. He recalled their last meeting in April this year on the occasion of the Façade Inauguration of the FAO Building.

Today’s meeting was held in occasion of the signing of the Letter of Intent between FAO and the Ministry for Infrastructure of Italy to develop an extensive project to upgrade FAO’s standards of sustainability, security, efficiency and accessibility.

As a result of the planned interventions, FAO Headquarters will become one of the most functional headquarters within the United Nations network, and provide a co-designed, strategic and unique seat of multilateralism. The Minister will support FAO with EUR 10 million in the next years.

The pair agreed to continue strengthening the excellent relations, working collectively to strengthen FAO to better support its Members towards achieving food security.