Romano Prodi he's not someone who talks all the time, but when he does it means he has a message to send. This was also the case in the extensive interview that he gave to "Corriere della sera" in recent days. The former prime minister had three things to say.
First: the economic maneuver of the Government it is dangerous in its showy challenge to Europe, it has no breathing space, it treats investments as a residual choice and has effects only in the short term, that is, it is a trick in view of the next European elections.
Second: the greatest risk that Italy runs today is that of becoming an illiberal democracy in which "those who have had the popular mandate think they have the right to do or say anything, as if the election brought ownership of the country as a dowry".
Third: to the populist drift we need to react by putting it on the field a political alignment "shared by the same idea of Europe" ranging from Tsipras to Macron and aiming for an "economic policy to support the euro, the fight against inequalities, a common defense and a shared line on immigration, security, youth and work".
The coming months will tell whether the pro-Europeans of the various schools and of the various countries will be able to build a broad alliance but characterized by a clearly recognizable vision and objectives for change and development of Europe. But what is most striking in Prodi's interview and in the common sentiment that is becoming more and more common in the country every day is the growing concern for the risks that Italy runs of becoming an illiberal democracy. It is a nightmare that took shape in a few months and on which we must reflect very seriously and above all act forcefully. And it is a point – that of illiberal democracy – on which, not by chance, Giuliano Ferrara's Il Foglio has also been insisting for some time.
The Def risks doing derail public finances and to take us to head-on collision with Europe exposing ourselves to the danger that the financial markets will catch fire and that Italy will slip into a tunnel at the end of which there is either the exit from the euro o the arrival of the Troika with a hefty bill to pay. Faced with the new surge in the spread, the Northern League's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini curses the "Soros-like speculators", but speculation, for better or for worse, is the salt of the market and has always been there. The wisdom of a government is not to bark at the moon, but to prevent speculation. Try Salvini to ask yourself why, after the summer 2011 financial Caporetto of the last Berlusconi government, of which the League was an integral part, the Btp.Bund spread has steadily decreased under the Monti, Letta, Renzi and Gentiloni governments. And if he is not blinded by sovereign demagoguery, perhaps he will find an answer.
But the Def and the economic maneuver are only the tip of the iceberg of the sovereign and populist drift in which the government of the League and the Five Stars are pushing Italy. What's really underneath?
"Il Foglio" has tried to line up all the political and institutional challenges launched in recent months by the Lega and the Five Stars and the list is impressive. It starts from overcoming of representative democracy hypothesized by Beppe Grillo and by Davide Casaleggio to thearchiving of the rule of law theorized by the Five Stars, from denial of science with the delusional No Vax campaign at port closures and now maybe too of airports supported by the leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, who considers himself above the law and who openly points to the disintegration of Europe, which certainly has many defects but which has guaranteed everyone 60 years of peace, to turn his gaze to the Russia of Putin and the xenophobic and nationalist group of Visegrad. Then it should be added to the account verbal aggression against political opponents (for Luigi Di Maio the promoters of the Jobs Act are notoriously "terrorists"), the daily attacks the judiciary and the press worthy of the worst Erdogan. Unfortunately it's not scaremongering, it's the reality we live every day.
Almost a century ago a writer of the caliber of Alberto Moravia wrote his first novel: it was entitled "The indifferent” and stigmatized the guiltily disengaged, irresponsible and incapable attitude of the Italian bourgeoisie of the XNUMXs. It would be unforgivable if indifference, which has already favored the birth and affirmation of fascism once before, now manifests itself in the face of those who strike every day not only the economy and the euro but liberal democracy and Europe. The deepest downgrading of Italy is this and it forces us to open our eyes without guilty laziness. Before it's late.
