‘The Draghi-Macron axis can be the pillar of the European Union’.

Editorial published by the newspaper ‘MF – Milano e Finanza’, 27 May 2021.

Since July 2020 an excellent Italian executive, Luca de Meo, has been at the helm of Renault. No one thinks that the largest French carmaker has suddenly become Italian, nor are Italian investments in other EU countries considered dangerous and put on the same level as Chinese investments, as sometimes happens in Rome. Relations between France and Italy are solid and have deep roots in history, rooted in the soil of culture, economy, art and cooperation.

Italy is France’s third largest trading partner after Germany and China. In 2020, we exported more products to France than we imported, increasing the transalpine trade deficit against us. The French are the first investors in Italy, the main foreign employers with over 200,000 employees. This is why the screeches that Italian nationalist and populist forces hurl at Paris, as the Honourable Giorgia Meloni did recently in an interview with MF-Milano Finanza, are senseless. Practising the sport of attacking European partners to scrape together easy consensus in Italy, ignoring the truth of the facts and basing one’s theses on false or erroneous statements, is quite common among Italian extremist forces, almost as if we were playing a perennial football match with ultras in the stands.

The M5S leaders Di Maio and Di Battista had tried this in the past by meeting the yellow waistcoats; the Lega League secretary Matteo Salvini had done it too. They all pointed to Merkel and Macron as Italy’s public enemy number one. I am convinced that the presence of European investment in Italy is always good news for our country and that mutual closures between European countries are absurd: wrong when they happen and are invoked in Paris or Rome.

I am not the only one who thinks this way: Meloni could knock on the door of Confindustria to be told how the entry of European partners has more often than not strengthened the Italian companies they have taken over. Italian sovereignists often roll out red carpets to the wrong friends, such as Poland and Hungary, who do not sympathise with us on the migrant issue. Countries that have tried to block the Recovery Plan and where obscurantist policies against women’s freedom, abortion, universities and freedom of the press are in force, where homophobia is a cardinal principle of government action.

If the EU is now held back and if we have not been able to fight unfair tax competition within the market, we owe it to the confederal model that Meloni would like to see, in which vetoes and unanimous decisions on taxes or foreign policy would be extended to all European policies. The real recipe for paralysis. If as Italians we can look optimistically towards the exit from this dramatic health, economic and social crisis, it is thanks to the courageous choices made by Europe and its leaders. It is thanks to Macron and Merkel if Italy has obtained over 200 billion Recovery Plan resources against the 29 of the ‘perfidious’ Germany or the 40 of the French ‘enemies’. Strange enemies these Europeans.

We have now entered a new phase: the axis between Draghi and Macron can be the pillar on which to re-found the EU. The two leaders’ European vision converges: there is no real sovereignty for anyone without a new European sovereignty in the face of challenges such as digital, finance, climate, security, health and defence. The alliance between the two countries can be key to success for both and for the future of Europe. As Marco Pannella taught, without a sovereign and democratic Europe, without a European homeland, we will not exist on the global stage and we will also lose our national homelands. This is the real challenge for our generation.