Who would have thought that the former Prime Minister and former President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, hurled anathemas against Donald Trump, re-elected President of the United States by popular acclaim, had mistaken fireflies for lanterns. Draghi is inspired by great ideals but also has a good dose of realism. And faced with the risks that the new Trump Presidency may lead to theEurope (the duties threatened by the US could cost Italy up to 7 billion!!!) has indicated the wisest way: to deal. But – here is the point – we must all deal with Trump together and not in a random order because if each European state deals alone it has very little negotiating power. The new American administration, Draghi claims, will bring “big differences in transatlantic relations, but not all of them will necessarily be negative”. Trump's unpredictability is a threat but it can play one way or the other and it is not written anywhere that Trump 2 will be worse than Trump 1. Much will also depend on Europe's attitude, on the urgency for the EU to wake up, to understand the epochal scope of the challenges and to learn to face them concretely and pragmatism. “Enough with postponing decisions”. But beyond the negotiating method, there is an unequivocal message that comes from the words spoken the day before yesterday by Draghi at the summit of Budapest: we are on the brink of the abyss and there is no more time to waste to make the reforms on which the very survival of Europe depends. This is the last chance to move. If not now, when?
Draghi wakes up Europe once again: "We need to negotiate with Trump, but all together and not in a scattered order."
A nice wake-up call and another lesson in realism from Mario Draghi to Europe: with Trump, anathemas are not valid, but we must all deal together