This time, the earthquake may be of maximum magnitude. Its epicentre, of course, is in Italy, in the Quirinal Palace in Rome, where one wise man, President Mattarella, is doing everything he can to limit the damage that will stem from a government born of the marriage of nationalism and populism. Even in the shadow of the Vatican, however, he will not be able to work miracles, as the people spoke loud and clear on 4 March of this year.
The political earthquake is Italian, but its after-shocks, which are inevitable rather than just probable, will no doubt make themselves felt as far away as Brussels and in all the capitals of the European Union. It is too early to predict the consequences that may, for Europe, result from the “contract for a government of change” entered into between the Movimiento cinque stelle of Luigi Di Maio and the Liga of Matteo Salvini. If the government of Giuseppe Conte gets off the ground, the opportunity for this will come very quickly. At the moment, it is enough to note that the likely Italian coalition has already declared its public enemy number one: ‘Brussels’.
Let us instead, at this stage, wonder whether this is entirely unjust. The response comes dramatically: no! No, the impotent Europe created by a European Council since it took sole charge bears an overwhelming responsibility in the citizens’ revolution that is now in the process of tipping Italy into sovereignism.
And so, is it really impossible to understand why so many Italians, even the most staunchly pro-European, should have felt “abandoned by the EU over the arrival every year of 180,000 refugees and migrants from Africa and Asia”, as Prof Mario Telò, former president of the Institute of European Studies of the Free University of Brussels explained (Le Soir, 19/20/21 May; our translation)? “It’s as if all the immigrants in the United States came through New Mexico and this state were responsible for assisting them all on its state budget – with the additional difference that new immigrants to New Mexico can freely move to the rest of the union, while new immigrants to Italy cannot”, the Economist Luigi Zingales quite correctly observes (foreignpolicy.com, 3 April).
So much for the ‘solidarity’ as expressed in the European Union of the European Council! Who would dare to claim that it was wrong for the Italians to feel that they had been treated badly over this? And who, consequently, would dare to chastise them for having democratically expressed their discontent at national level? This is the only level at which they can make their voices heard. And criticising them for having voted unfortunately, favouring populists and extremists, carries very little weight compared to the extreme selfishness shown by the governments of the other countries.
This, in reality, is the root cause of the conflict that is poisoning the European Union and which, with the contribution of the situation in Italy, is even threatening to lead to its downfall. This conflict is the same one that is playing out within the European Council, where the figureheads of 28 democracies are in ferocious competition with each other to satisfy their electorate back home. This conflict is the consequence of a refusal – the refusal to allow a European democracy proper to emerge, with a government that would, for the competences given over to it, have the single objective of the common good of the entire European Union, rather than, as is the case today, nothing more than the sum total of national interests, with the attendant stymying effects. In the context of the EU, as these interested can never be fully attained, the people are losing patience with this impotent and insolent Europe.
Are the people always right? No, and the people of Italy have just proven this. But what is certain is that governments and elite classes do all they can to encourage European citizens – not just the European ones, as Donald Trump is daily proof – to vote for extremes. This has just led Harold James, lecturer in history and international affairs at Princeton, to establish a link between the current era and fall of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the early 1930s. Drawing ten conclusions from this, he notes in particular that “economic insecurity and hardship persuade people that any regime must be better than the current one” and that “under extreme economic conditions, proportional representation can make matters worse”, as it is “more likely to deliver an incoherent electoral majority, usually comprising parties on the far left and far right that want to reject ‘the system’, but agree on little else” (Project Syndicate, 2 May).
Ten years after the beginning of the existential crisis that hit the EU and is continuing to affect its citizens, are the members of the European Council not behaving a bit like the natural heirs to the Zentrum government which, in the wake of the crisis of 1929, ended up paving the way for Hitler to come to power?
Having to ask this question is a terrible thing. European citizens who are determined not to allow populists and extremists to continue to draw benefit from the floundering Europe that the European Council has to offer them need to do something about it. They need to respond while there is still time. (To be continued)
Michel Theys