Tajani Orders Italian Diplomats to Replace All Handshakes With Full Parliamentary Debates
Italy's foreign minister declares that from Monday, every diplomatic greeting must be conducted as a formal parliamentary session, complete with amendments and a vote, because «the force of politics» demands nothing less.
ROME — Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has ordered every Italian embassy on earth to abolish the handshake and replace it with a full parliamentary debate, to be held on the pavement outside the chancery, lasting no less than the time it takes to read the entire national budget aloud twice.
Under the new protocol, an ambassador greeting a counterpart must first table a motion of greeting, accept amendments from the assembled staff, and put the greeting to a vote. If the motion fails, the ambassador must bow and try again with a revised text. «We have chosen the force of politics,» Tajani said. «A handshake is a policy of force. A debate is a policy of persuasion. We will persuade everyone, one pavement at a time.»
The foreign ministry has begun relocating its entire ceremonial division to a converted car park in Rome, where diplomats rehearse greetings on a timetable that runs from dawn until the pigeons give up. Staff who forget the order must repeat the debate in the rain. «It is not a punishment,» a ministry spokesperson said. «It is a training regime.»
By Thursday, the French ambassador had been greeted four times and voted down twice. The German ambassador arrived with a prepared amendment and was asked to wait while Italy finished debating whether to debate him. Tajani has since extended the rule to phone calls, which must now begin with a quorum check and end with a formal vote of thanks to the telephone.
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