Air navigation deal grows Italy-Taiwan cooperation. On Wednesday, ENAV – the company that manages civil air traffic in Italy, listed on Milan’s stock exchange – announced it had signed a contract with ANWS – Taiwan’s air navigation services provider – through its subsidiary IDS AirNav, which provides world-leading navigation systems.
- The five-year order is worth €5 million and includes the supply and support of CRONOS, a new aeronautical information management system to be used in Taiwanese control rooms and become accessible to airports and airlines by 2024.
Air is proving a promising pathway between Rome and Taipei, which are becoming ever closer politically. In their June trip to Taiwan, Senate Deputy President Gian Marco Centinaio and Senator Elena Murelli took advantage of the recently-inaugurated direct flight from Milan to Taipei, provided by Eva Air.
- Another direct route linking Rome to the Taiwanese capital (operated by China Air) was also resumed in the past months. Taiwan’s diplomatic representative to Italy, Vincent Tsai, and the ambassador to the Holy See, Matthew Lee, as well as members of the Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group, attended its inauguration.
Ties are a-bolstering. “The first historic mission of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee to Taiwan ended today,” wrote Italian MEP Susanna Ceccardi in an official note on Thursday. In their meeting with President Tsai Ing-wen and senior government and industry representatives, she continued, “I discussed both extended parliamentary cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” as well as digitalisation as “a tool for independence and freedom.”
- Her visit “ testifies to the special attention paid to the Pacific area and geopolitical developments” by the Italian majority, she said.
- She also highlighted the upcoming Taiwanese representative office in Milan, Italy’s second after the one in Rome, and the budding cooperation on chips (especially in light of the upcoming Italian Chips Act).
Keep looking East. The Italian MEP then noted that Italy “is working for a de-escalation of relations between Taiwan and China and for the maintenance of the status quo, respecting the One China policy.” The mission she took part in also touched down in Japan, which she called “a key partner in a strategic geopolitical area,” and Italy’s “point of reference in the Pacific” as a “model of modernity that does not abandon its roots and traditions and [acts] bulwark against old and new totalitarianisms.”
- Tokyo, she noted, has also partnered up with Italy and the United Kingdom to develop the sixth-generation fighter aircraft.
