Why and on behalf of whom did it? This was the prevailing question that politicians and journalists asked themselves at the conclusion of the harsh attack launched on Wednesday in the Senate by Mario Monti on the Prime Minister on European policy. Sign of the conspiracy and conspiracy vocation of our political and information system or suspicion based on concrete facts? On the merits, two visions of economic policy and two opposing visions have clashed regarding the conditions that can save Europe from disintegration. In the method, the harsh and sometimes aggressive tone used by Senator Monti, usually calm and measured, reveals the idea that we must and can give political form to the opposite vision to that pursued by the Renzi government and shared by many technocratic, financial and European politicians as well as some European chancelleries. I greatly esteem Professor Monti (on whose list I was elected in 2013) and I believe that the whole country owes him gratitude for having faced the 2011 crisis by loading unpopularity with harsh but necessary measures voted (and then cowardly disowned) by all parties. That said, as the story of Civic Choice also demonstrates, from its birth to the electoral campaign up to the Professor's rapid exit from the political arena, politics and his dynamics are not exactly in his comfort zone
Monti certainly interprets a widespread mood in some European circles and also, in Italy, in the circle of historical pro-Europeans who feel uncomfortable with the tones of national pride often used by our prime minister and who above all fear that a policy entirely based on the request for "flexibility ” or deficit financing of further tax cuts could reduce Italy's international credibility and could once again create a destabilizing effect on our public debt and on the banks that own significant shares of it. Not a far-fetched concern but to which Renzi has responded in the last two years with a decisive turnaround on institutional, economic and social reforms. A policy aimed at making debt sustainable by focusing on growth and not just on a rigor that has exhausted the country in recent years, destroyed the middle class, and brought the South to its knees. A strategy shared, when not stimulated, by the President of the ECB as an Italian counterpart to QE. And on the other hand, the "emeritus" President Monti himself knows, from direct experience, how difficult it is in our system to bring about the change that the Renzi government has brought forward up to now. So, if anything, we could expect a boost in this sense from Monti, to signal an attenuation and weakening of the reformist drive (the competition law that the Senate is discussing risks coming out very weak, the implementing decrees of the PA reform do not maintain all the promises announced), rather than the mere re-proposition not only of respect for the rules (from which Italy, in any case, will not deviate) but of an uncritical adherence to the logic of the fiscal compact. A logic that the new Commission had also undertaken to correct with a European policy entirely devoted to growth while the Juncker Plan is struggling to produce anti-cyclical effects and Eurobonds for the financing of European investments in large infrastructures is no longer talked about.
And at the same time, while Europe is experiencing the upheaval of large migrations and European countries are having to face the threat of terrorism, the answers are to nationalize the management of immigration and to marginalize some countries from the Schenghen area. But on these aspects, which also risk creating irreparable fractures in the European Union, Monti did not speak yesterday with the harshness reserved for our Premier.
Criticisms can legitimately be leveled at Renzi on the management of individual dossiers or even on the management of relations with some European institutions but one cannot fail to recognize him, especially by those who really want to protect Europe from the wave of xenophobic and nationalist populism from to which it is threatened, of being able to interpret the malaise of the Italians (who, let us remember, remain the most pro-Europeans) even sometimes by raising the tone, to build a more political Europe up to the challenges of our time. Renzi and his way of being in Europe prevent the social effects of the crisis from being exploited by populist parties in an anti-European key. And at the same time he works for a redefinition and a relaunch of the European identity. The meeting of foreign ministers promoted by Minister Gentiloni in view of the celebrations, in 2017, of the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaties of Rome goes exactly in this sense.
Change, reforms, need political consensus to be carried forward. It is no longer time for technocratic or elitist solutions. Today a crisis in the Renzi government that was the result of attacks on the financial markets would not have the outcome of 2011 but would deliver Italy, and perhaps not only Italy, into the hands of populists of every stripe. Better not play with fire.
