Now it is no longer austerity policies, the Euro or the economic crisis that threaten the construction of Europe, but two eminently political issues are jeopardizing the process of integration of the old continent: immigration and the British referendum. With an alarming coincidence of accents, two leading figures from Brussels, Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, and the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, spoke of the risk of disintegration if a way is not found to implement a common policy in the face of the immigration. On the same wavelength, our Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Benedict DellaVedova, during a seminar organized by the Tor Vergata University Foundation for Economics, spoke of the two political crises that risk wrecking the dream of a united Europe, namely the inability to manage the phenomenon of immigration in a unified manner and the threat of the British referendum which could lead to a separation of the United Kingdom from the continent.
According to Della Vedova, European politicians have not been able to propose policies capable of overcoming the often irrational fears of their electors and have boycotted any attempt to make a common policy of welcoming immigration and, if necessary, of contrasting it. The result was that space was given to unscrupulous political formations that rode fears and social malaise by re-proposing the defense of national identities, the fight against the Islamization of Europe, the refusal the rigidities of the Brussels bureaucracy. Eastern countries such as Hungary and Poland, which have benefited greatly from European funds and the opening of markets in recent years, are now the ones where the nationalist impulse takes hold in the illusion that we can stay in the single market without making any political commitment and without respecting the common rules. But this, as Europe's past history has taught us, is not in the logic of things: sooner or later nationalism leads to economic protectionism and therefore risks destroying not only the single currency but also the single market will no longer be possible.
Even the British premier David Cameron he seems to have realized the dangers that the disintegration of Europe could entail for the United Kingdom itself and has begun to warn his fellow citizens about the benefits brought by a detachment from Europe. "Do not think that outside the Union there is the land of milk and honey" he said with an effective quotation from the Bible. As Della Vedova underlined, it is not clear what Great Britain, which already today enjoys many privileges in Brussels, can expect from a separation from Europe. In recent centuries, England has never been disinterested in the balance between the European powers even if it is busy building a great empire. But today the situation has changed. There is no longer an imperial policy to which to give precedence and the European balances can be better safeguarded by staying within the mechanisms of Brussels than by isolating themselves across the Channel.
But in the society of communication-entertainment, the screamers who concoct simplistic recipes often have the better of those who want to think calmly and on the basis of in-depth analyses. For example the prof. Paganetto during the seminar, he illustrated a series of data which demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt two truths kept silent by populists: that immigration does not affect the unemployment of residents, nor does it have any effects on wages (therefore unemployment, when it exists, depends on other factors), and secondly that aid for the development of poor countries, even if they were successful in their intent, would not curb emigration which, on the contrary, would receive a new impetus from the increased economic resources of a greater mass of subjects. Naturally, the immigration of large masses of individuals creates serious problems that politics must address. The first is that of the imbalances created in the distribution of costs and benefits among the different sections of the population. We must support those who are or feel damaged and transform a problem into an opportunity for growth for the whole country.
These are not trivial problems. But we need to overcome this destructive fury whereby if there is something wrong with the construction of Europe, we prefer to tear the building down instead of concentrating our energies on what to do to make it work better. In France or Germany, those who complain about the policies of their governments do not think it is better to divide the country into many pieces. So if we are faced with a political battle, we must abandon all shyness and say loud and clear to the many junkyards that Europe is “our better destiny” and that we must work to make it work better because nationalism, as we have seen in the past, is not the solution but the source of further rivalries and conflicts.
