“Italy would have a formidable candidate for the future presidency of the European Commission: it is the president of the ECB, Mario Draghi. But we need a serious Italian government that has the wisdom and strength to nominate him". Other than sovereignty or national populism. Italy would have every chance of getting out of the corner and playing its part in Europe if only it had a government capable of understanding and defending the true interests of the country instead of skidding every day chasing the last vote of the voters. It's the thought of Claudio Martelli, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice in the First Republic, twice MEP, one of the most brilliant minds of Italian reformism. Martelli has long since come down from the ring of active politics, where he was a protagonist of the first magnitude, but he hasn't lost the passion and lucidity to look with understandable concern at the sad drift of Italian politics. FIRSTonline interviewed him on the eve of the European elections.
Martelli, the European elections of 26 May do not seem at all the same as the previous ones. Perhaps there won't be a referendum on Europe yes or Europe no as Salvini says, but we are certainly facing a turning point behind which a strong sovereign and populist line-up is looming for the first time, of which Italy is the epicenter , which will fight against a two-speed pro-European line-up, made up of those who defend Europe as it is and those who would like to reform it. Among the many reasons that have reduced Europe to the current state of crisis, which, in your opinion, is the most triggering and the one from which we need to start again to reverse the current regressive and disruptive trends?
“I think the combination of globalization and immigration has been devastating. Not having been governed, globalization has exposed Europe to a competitive dimension, especially with China but not only, for which it was not prepared. In turn, immigration, which is the human face of globalization and which in Italy at the beginning of the 90s had been actively managed – with the establishment of a special ministry, with the law on the right of asylum and with the law on citizenship, to which I am honored to have contributed in a decisive way as Minister of Justice - has been neglected and underestimated. Error after error has been repeated endlessly with improvised and ineffective approaches and with the illusion that unscrupulous communication could replace intelligent policy. A democratic barrier to the migratory wave was finally placed by Minister Minniti under the Renzi and Gentiloni governments, but by then it was too late to stop disinformation and fears. In reality, globalization and immigration could and can be governed, as Chancellor Merkel demonstrated in Germany when she opened the borders to Syrian refugees but at the same time hired 10 public officials to manage the emergency and integration. Where to start today? From a forward-looking general vision of the problems and the competence to face them”.
What will remain of the Europe we have known as a factor of peace and well-being if there is a sovereign and populist affirmation in the European elections and what hope is there that the democratic and pro-European forces will bring it out of its torpor and immobility?
“I don't know if the forces crowding the caravansary of national populism and which are often represented by colorful and inconsistent parties and personalities will be able to be decisive in the new European Parliament. The signs of democratic recovery emerging from many European countries actually lead us to think that the future of the Old Continent is less gloomy than feared. However, we should understand why, after Trump's ascension to the White House and after Brexit, Italy is more exposed than others to sovereign and populist slippage and how much its political and economic weakness weighs. The truth is that, in Italy as in Europe, there is a dramatic lack of leadership and that today, on closer inspection, in the entire European Union there is only one leader worthy of the name, who is the president of the ECB , Mario Draghi, the man to whom one speech (“Whatever it takes”) was enough to save the euro. A forward-looking Italian government truly attentive to the real interests of the country would not miss the opportunity to nominate it, with excellent chances of success, for the presidency of the European Commission, but I fear that Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, busy as they are in their henhouse squabbles , they didn't even think about it."
In reality, if on the national-populist side the disruptive myopia of Europe stands out, on the democratic and pro-European side the indeterminacy dominates which can be summed up in the slogan "Europe yes, but not like this". And then Europe how? For true pro-Europeans, it is not time to throw your heart beyond the obstacle and to give the halt to the vetoes of the Visegrad bloc by proposing a two-speed Europe in which majority voting is finally possible and in which Italy is a part by joining in the lead group?
“That's right, but to wage and win a courageous battle that aims to reform Europe and determine a new governance, we need to start with a government that, unlike the current one, has Europeanism in its heart. However, the challenge for a new governance for a new Europe is certainly a challenge that must be met, even if it is not the only one”.
What are the most urgent ones?
“The challenge for the common European defence, which has become more urgent after the US blackmail on NATO and which requires Europe to assume the leadership and economic guidance of the Atlantic Alliance. Then there is the urgency of a European economic policy that overcomes the one-way austerity of the Northern countries and of the Visegrad bloc and the rigidity of the Germans and that presses the accelerator on development and investments in innovation and infrastructures in function of greater growth of the economy and employment, especially among young people. Finally, last but not least, there is the question of training to be won through a new Erasmus platform that extends from universities to secondary school and which provides that at least 1/3 of the training time of young Europeans is spent studying in other countries of European Union".
However, he does not believe that, in addition to a good program and clear and defined priorities, Europe would need to find a soul and a project that warms the hearts, especially of young people, and that revives hope for a better future. In short, a New Deal. The alliance between merits and needs that you launched at the socialist assembly in Rimini in 1982 still seems extraordinarily timely today: could this not be precisely the answer to Italy's social and political malaise?
“I am pleased that even today there are those who recognize the vitality of that intuition which at the time was realized only to a small extent but which confirms its timeliness for at least two reasons. In the first place because the project of an alliance of merits and needs gives identity to a political strategy of strong and modern reformism, which reconciles the opposing social and political balances and which bypasses the times. And secondly because, not having been fully tested, that project retains its strength and its ideal attraction".
Why, despite having been appreciated by many, in the 80s the project of merits and needs did not materialize?
“In politics, as in life, timing is decisive and perhaps Tony Blair was right who, in the 90s, told me that Labor was studying my project very carefully but that they considered it too ahead of its time, at least for a country like the 'Italy, whose society and whose political culture were not prepared to take up a revolutionary challenge like that. Even Bettino Craxi, who had initially supported the project and who at the time spoke more and more about the fight against old and new poverty, then ended up not supporting it adequately. But that stone thrown into the pond produced some fruit”.
What?
“The creation of ministries and the consequent Equal Opportunities, Immigration and Cultural Heritage policies did not rain from heaven but are the result of that project. Unfortunately there was no anti-welfare political philosophy which should have been the engine of the alliance between merits and needs. And there was also a certain snobbery of the left which had not fully grasped the reformist depth of that project and underestimated the central role of education and the importance of school as a social elevator”.
Where should a modern policy of needs start today? From the Rei or from the Citizenship Income?
“Certainly from Rei, which the Renzi and Gentiloni governments had the merit of launching but in which they invested scarce resources and which they were unable to adequately explain to the Italians. On the contrary, it makes us think that a welfare intervention that does not reward work, such as the Citizenship Income, has so far been requested by a lower number of citizens than that expected by the Five Stars, proving that the real dimensions of poverty in Italy they are perhaps less than the 5 or 6 million that we often talk about and that instead the diffusion of undeclared work is stronger than one thinks”.
And where should the promotion of merits begin?
"Definitely from school, but also from factories and offices through company bargaining and cooperation between social partners".
Much will depend on the evolution of the political framework. In your opinion, what effect will the European elections have on the current government? Will there be a government crisis after the vote or will there even be early elections?
“Difficult to make predictions. I believe that there is a 50% probability that the cement of power and armchairs will lead to the confirmation of the existence, however fictitious, of the Salvini-Di Maio government and another 50% probability that, after the European vote, the current political alliances crumble. But what neither Salvini nor Di Maio considers is the ever more looming presence on the Italian political scene of a stony guest called the financial crisis and which, making the necessary exorcisms, risks being worse than that of the summer of 2011. the fact that there is talk of the possible arrival of the Troika in Italy or the adoption of a property tax on the wealth of Italians or even the restructuring of the public debt are disturbing signs”.
Faced with such problematic scenarios, Zingaretti's Democratic Party does not touch the ball and has not yet found a way to overturn the table by strengthening its reformist identity. In your opinion, would the hypothesis of an alliance with the Five Stars be an opportunity or a tragic mistake for the Democratic Party?
“It seems significant to me that, at least for this legislature, Zingaretti has closed the speech by excluding that the Democratic Party can ally itself with the Five Stars. The future is yet to be written”.
