Italy Joins China's New Silk Road Project

> "The seemingly innocuous move comes at a sensitive time for Europe and the European Union, where there is suddenly a great deal of trepidation not only about China, but about working out how Europe or the EU should adapt and react to a changing world," Prof Frankopan told the BBC.

Forgive my ignorance, but aren't many EU decisions required to be unanimous? So if China has close ties to Italy, could it use it's influence to convince Italy to "veto" hypothetical EU sanctions against Chinese human rights violations or other actions that are good for the EU but against Chinese domestic and foreign policy?

Yes. That is my major concern. In fact, it has already happened! We have already Greece (with its China owned ports) blocking an EU statement:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-rights/greece-block...

In fairness, from the perspective of the average Greek citizen, the EU thing hasn't worked out terribly well for their homeland.

In the West what we need is to restructure our facilities such that if you participate you will prosper. We need for everyone to prosper. Not necessarily equally, but what happened to Greece went beyond simply not prospering as much as other nations. It was legitimately negatively impacted. (A lot self inflicted, but a lot inflicted by the structure of Western trade facilities as well.)

Having mentioned all that, I grant you, having all parties prosper at EU scale is a little difficult to pull off.