Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi signed a treaty on Friday at the Quirinale palace in Rome to get France and Italy working together better. That’s good news for Europe. It’s also tinder for populists. How their countries — both founding members of the European Union — pull off cooperation will determine how much nearer the continent’s dream of "ever closer union” gets to reality.
France and Italy share a border and coasts on the Mediterranean and have interlocking histories on both sides of that sea. Their culture and style are admired abroad even as their citizens register a sense of decline at home.
The commonalities have not always guaranteed harmony. In the past five years, the two countries have fallen out over Libya, banks, shipbuilding, populism and the Mona Lisa among other things. In 2019, Paris recalled its ambassador after Italy’s then deputy prime minister, Luigi di Maio, of the populist Five Star Movement met in solidarity with gilet jaunes protesters who were raising havoc in France.