“Either we change the direction of Europe or we have lost Europe”. To say it is Prime Minister Matteo Renzi who, during a speech in the Chamber (where less than one hundred deputies were present), continues to press the button on the need for the EU to aim for growth rather than rigour, in that which Renzi defines as "an extraordinarily delicate and sensitive transition phase".
According to the prime minister, therefore, "Europe is at a crossroads" and must allow governments to "unbundle large investments in public works from the stability pact", i.e. those investments at a national level "to reduce the energy bill, for bandwidth large, for school buildings or for the suburbs”.
“In the European debate – continues Renzi – there are those who believe that much has been done and those who have not done anything, but everyone is convinced that today the EU has made a political choice, perhaps not enough and this will depend on Juncker. Politics must do its job and not leave Europe to the technocrats”.
Politics at the center of the European project, therefore, together with the massive return on investment for growth: “On the one hand, there are those who believe that much has been done, on the other, nothing. But we are all convinced that there are some innovative elements, Europe has made a perhaps insufficient political choice, it will depend on Juncker if it is followed through to the end”.
And, still on the subject of investments, Renzi could not fail to dwell on the hot topic of the 2024 Olympics, for which, just yesterday, Italy announced its candidacy. For the premier, the Olympics will affect Rome, but not only: Florence, Naples and Sardinia are the officially candidate locations for now. And they are not a dream, but rather a concrete "rigorous, tenacious, high quality" project.
A candidacy, that of Italy, which, net of the inevitable controversies (also given the "particular" moment that the Capital is experiencing) seems to have gathered a wide range of consensus around itself: "We will do everything to be proud of it - he said commented the premier- . It can happen that we don't win, or give up, it must be a moment that sees us alive and fit."
Meanwhile, yesterday the two-hour meeting between Renzi and Romano Prodi at Palazzo Chigi made a lot of noise, and will certainly continue to do so. Although the topics on the agenda were of an international nature, the face-to-face between the two seems above all to have been the first stone to pave the road that would lead the Professor to the Quirinale as Napolitano's successor.
A path that Prodi, burned by the hundred and one snipers in April 2013, is not yet sure he wants to take, but which, in the meantime, gathers broad consensus within the minorities of the left (SEL and Pd minority) and which could also attract the sympathies of the grillini (after all, Prodi's name was included in the Quirinale of the M5S), but which, of course, worries the right.
Many voices have been raised by Forza Italia: "The Renzi-Prodi meeting - according to the force activist Elvira Savino - is a provocation for the centre-right", but also Ncd, through the leader Angelino Alfano, expresses its doubts: "It is necessary to choose an authoritative personality who does not have a party pin pinned to his chest”.
