In a keynote address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, Premier Matteo Renzi kicked off Italy's six-month duty presidency of the European Union by calling on it to change in order to save itself.
"Europe's leadership is not just an economic demand, for investment in our companies, but it also has a human dimension.
You represent a beacon of the civilization of globalisation", the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) told MEPs.
"The great and true challenge we have ahead of us is to regain the soul of Europe". "Above all we have to ask ourselves for the strength to change to be credible...Italy believes in European institutions and wants to change," he said in a speech inaugurating Italy's duty presidency. Renzi has said several times that Rome wants to use the duty presidency to make the union focus on economic growth and fighting unemployment after years of painful austerity in response to the eurozone debt crisis. He is in a strong position after Italian voters a gave him a mandate for his ambitious reform programme. Over 40% opted for the PD in last month's European elections, making it the biggest national party in the European Parliament. Italy will respect the EU's stability and growth pact but more growth is needed, he told MEPs.
"Without growth there is no future", he said. If the EU took a selfie today, it would be a portrait of "fatigue, resignation and boredom", he added.
He told MEPs that they have "the great responsibility of restoring confidence and hope in the EU". Renzi went on to warn of the dangers inherent in turning inwards when so many are being driven onto European shores by war and poverty. "If we continue to barricade ourselves within our borders, we won't go anywhere," he said.
Europe "is a frontier" and "this poses many problems, and we in Italy know it at a time when difficulties, in particular in Libya, are bringing a series of deadly disasters in our Mediterranean Sea, the Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)", the premier said in reference to Italy's migrant search and rescue operation of the same name.
Italy launched Mare Nostrum in October after 366 people drowned off the coasts of Sicily in two migrant boat disasters, and has been calling on the EU for financial and logistical backup ever since.
"Never as now is there a need for Italy not to go to Europe asking or claiming things, but to bring an extraordinary history and a future on a par with our past", said the Italian premier, adding that a Europe without the United Kingdom would "not be less rich but would be less Europe, less itself". Renzi, who unseated his PD colleague Enrico Letta in February to become Italy's youngest premier at 39, has already scored some victories in his drive to shift the EU's focus onto growth. These include the final document of last week's summit of EU leaders in Brussels, which said full and better use of the flexibility allowed by the Growth and Stability Pact should be capitalized on.
He said that this means that countries like Italy will be rewarded for structural economic reforms made at home with more room for growth-stoking spending. "For the first time the focus is on growth," Renzi said Friday. "Insisting on growth is a turning point for Europe. We feel that you must not break the rules of the pact, but those who talk only about stability and not about growth break the principles of the pact". In a meeting with Italian MEPs earlier, Renzi said the country must show "courage and pride" in taking on leadership of the Union.
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