Italy plans to hold talks with China about a potential exit from Beijing’s flagship infrastructure investment programme, while seeking to maintain friendly relations and robust commercial ties.Rome was firmly rebuked by Washington and Brussels when it joined China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative in 2019, the only G7 country to do so. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, during last year’s election campaign, also publicly called the decision “a big mistake”.

Meloni said on Wednesday that she had not yet decided whether to terminate Italy’s participation in the signature foreign policy programme of China’s president Xi Jinping. “The debate is open,” Meloni said in Prague.

But Italian officials say Meloni’s government would ideally like to find a way to extricate itself from the BRI — without provoking Beijing’s wrath, or being subjected to punishing retaliation.