Everyone in Ventotene today, Monday 22 August, to talk about the relaunch of Europe and to tell the world, in the symbolic place dear to Altiero Spinelli and sincere pro-Europeans, that, despite the infinite tribulations, Europe exists and wants to oppose forcefully against terrorist attacks and against all the disruptive, populist and nationalist impulses which besiege it.
Prime Minister Matteo Renzi will receive the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French president Francois Hollande on board the "Garibaldi", the first aircraft carrier of the Navy in service for almost thirty years and moored in Ventotene, from where one of the fathers of Europe, In the 40s Altiero Spinelli launched his famous Manifesto for European Unity during the confinement to which the fascist regime had condemned him.
It is there for all to see that Europe, in order to relaunch itself, would need to be rebuilt from top to bottom, eliminating all the bureaucratic brakes that paralyze it and reconciling itself with the European peoples even at the price of the transfer of pieces of national sovereignty by of individual states. This is the future horizon, but the turning point is not for today.
It is useless to delude ourselves that miracles can be born in Ventotene which, if they occur, will only arrive after the Italian referendum and after the French and German elections of 2017. But the fact that the three major European leaders meet in a symbolic place for the Old Continent should not be underestimated and testifies that, even if reforms are not around the corner, the intention to relaunch the European Union is there.
Beyond future projects on Europe after Brexit, the meeting will be an opportunity to address common problems of urgent relevance such as the fight against international terrorism and the increasingly difficult management of migratory flows, obviously without forgetting the issues of economic growth. And it is not without significance that the directorate, initially based on the Germany-France axis, is increasingly expanding to include Italy with the increasingly frequent presence of Matteo Renzi among the major European leaders alongside Merkel and Hollande.
Our country, as we know, has its problems but without Italy a new Europe is not even conceivable, especially after Brexit. Beppe Grillo or Matteo Salvini can be forgotten, but Germany and France know it.
