The current Europe Union lacks solidarity, a true common interior policy and even more so, a common foreign and defense policy, and must regain its standing and capacity to take decisions. If he were alive today, this kind of Union would make Italian statesman Alcide de Gasperi say: "Mamma mia!..." pointed out Romani Prodi, imagining the reaction of one of the EU's founding fathers during the first day of the The State of the Union, a conference organised in Florence by the European University Institute. The former Italian premier spoke with ex Italian president Giorgio Napolitano about the lack "of a strong conception of solidarity, a feeling of togetherness and the sharing of common mission in the world at large".
According to the former Italian head of state Napolitano, De Gasperi was "very forward-looking" in his vision for Europe and his outlook "is as true today as is it was 50 years ago".
"He certainly wouldn't be pleased", stressed Prodi.
On the occasion of the official launch of the Research Centre Alcide De Gasperi, Napolitano warned the Italian political class that "democracy means that the majority shoulders the responsibility to decide" and underlined that the recent approval of Premier Matteo Renzi's Italicum electoral law "was fundamental" and an "important achievement". Europe's decision-making deficit in foreign policy is huge and this is a field in which "the instruments are there, but what is lacking is political will" maintained Napolitano answering a question put to him by ANSA's deputy editor-in-chief Stefano Polli, who moderated the debate.
Napolitano also spoke about the painful lot of migrants and called Europe's common response "insignificant," saying that "the latest EU summit proposed very vague instruments" to address the crisis. Prodi agreed and said Europe appeared hamstrung. He criticised Brussels and stressed that "when Europe's leadership is content with being a barometer following the vagaries of public opinion" the Old Continent becomes a "Europe of fear".
Prodi did not mince his words either while speaking about Greece "which fiddled its accounts because Germany, France and Italy let it do so".
Delving into the migrant issue, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Sandro Gozi denounced "the hefty costs of a Europe which does not act like Europe has." But he defended the results of the extraordinary EU summit called for by Matteo Renzi and said that "Italy has finally won its battle, the first one".
"The Mediterranean," Gozi added, "is not an Italian frontier but a European one". However, Gozi agreed that in Europe "there is no solidarity left", whereas "this is the key word of the Schuman Declaration" - the declaration that 65 years ago set the revolutionary path towards what eventually became the European Union. Nowadays, as a result of the economic crisis and the fears it engendered, the gap between European people and the EU institutions has widened and in this climate, the Florence event marked the beginning of a new "narrative" for a "better and more secure future".
The new Schuman Declaration drafted by Giuliano Amato together with former French European affairs minister Elisabeth Guigou and ex Lithuanian president Vaira-Vike Freiberga is a testament to this. The EU, states the Declaration, "must convincingly prove that a Europe united in solidarity offers the best response and, in the some cases, the only effective one".
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