Mr President, honourable colleagues,

it is the eve of the first European Council meeting of the new EU legislative term. The European Parliament’s legislative term that will officially begin on 16 July will be the tenth since citizens first had the opportunity to directly elect their representatives back in 1979. The new Parliament will in fact take office on 16 July, and its composition will be the result of the indications that citizens in the 27 EU Member States gave at the ballot box between 6 and 9 June.

Those elections represented a very significant milestone in Europe’s history, and we can and must draw a number of important indications from them. The most important came from the parties involved in the elections, even before citizens voted. Over these months, practically all political groups have highlighted the need for change in European policies. No one, let alone the parties present in this hall, presented themselves to voters saying that Europe was fine the way it was, that nothing required change and that it would be enough to maintain the status quo. Everyone agreed on one point: Europe needs to move in a different direction from the one it has followed until now.

This position is also the result of an awareness, which was also then confirmed by citizens’ votes. European citizens’ level of attention and appreciation for the EU institutions is increasingly low. Approval ratings today stand at around 45%, which is significantly lower than a few decades ago, while disaffection has become tangible, with abstentionism steadily on the rise. We have seen this in Italy, where 48.3% of those eligible went to vote, down by around 6 points compared with the European elections five years ago in 2019. This is the lowest figure ever, with the participation rate falling below 50% for the first time. This phenomenon, however, could be seen across many nations all over the continent, and we cannot remain indifferent to this. 

This Parliament cannot remain indifferent to this and, even more to the point, Europe’s ruling classes cannot and must not remain indifferent to this, starting with those who, also over the last few days, unfortunately seem tempted to brush things under the carpet and continue with old and disappointing ways of thinking as if nothing had happened, refusing to heed the clear signals from those who voted, and from the many who decided not to.

The first question we are being called upon to answer therefore regards what the European Union has been getting wrong until now, and how we can reverse this trend. In other words, we need to have the intellectual honesty to ask ourselves, without prejudice or preconceived positions, what the critical issues and reasons are that have led an increasingly high number of European citizens to not feel adequately represented in our continent’s political integration process.

The first, historic achievement of the integration process was the ability to ensure peace within Europe’s borders. From the end of the Second World War until now, in fact, there have not been any conflicts between the nations in the Union. Although this achievement may now seem like a given to us, if we look back over Europe’s thousand-year-old history and the very many conflicts our continent has experienced, then we realise this was by no means a given. We can also realise this is not a given if we look at what is happening just outside Europe’s borders.

The second great achievement, which is linked to the first regarding peace and stability, is that, over the decades, said peace and stability have also ensured growth and development. However, that growth and development have slowed down more and more over the years, and this is undoubtedly one of the elements contributing to Europeans feeling alienated from the Union, because the Union has basically seemed unable to reverse this trend. 

In my personal view, the main problem has been caused by a European Union that was always too much of the same, sometimes even perceived as being self-referential, so much so that it was not able to adapt its strategy to a world that was changing around it, as if its leading positions on the geopolitical chessboard were unalterable, rather than instead being achievements to be defended and relaunched.

In the past, it was more than legitimate, and right, that the Union focused primarily on internal matters, because looking inward meant looking at an extremely significant part of the world, in terms of both economic and geopolitical importance. However, the scenario drastically changed over time, yet Europe continued to predominantly look inward, as if unaware of what was happening beyond its borders.
 
Some figures can be helpful to follow this line of reasoning.
In 1990, the GDP of what at the time was a Europe with 12 Member States represented approximately 27.5% of global GDP. In 2022, with 27 Member States, its weighting had dropped below 16.5%. While the European economy gradually lost strength, outside its borders the economy of the United States remained more or less stable, while the Chinese economy grew exponentially. In 1990, Chinese GDP represented 1.8% of global GDP, while in 2022 that figure stood at over 18%. The scenario was changing, but the European Union did not adapt its strategy. 

Over these long years, a Eurocentric vision has therefore continued to prevail, as if the choices of others necessarily had to depend on our own. I believe this is the historical turning point that has been missing until now, causing the EU institutions to have an approach over these years that citizens have told us with their votes they do not agree with.

Being self-absorbed in this way and pretending not to see the bigger picture, the European Union has gradually turned into a kind of bureaucratic giant, as indeed we have denounced many times. And if that weren’t enough, in addition to this bureaucracy, there have often been ideological choices, and the combination of these two things – bureaucracy and ideology – has built up much of the distance that today exists between citizens and the EU institutions. 

Italians and Europeans have perceived the Union as being too invasive, as trying to dictate to citizens what they should eat, what car they should drive, how they should renovate their homes, how much land should be cultivated, which technology should be developed, and so on regarding very many aspects of daily life. And while it tries to do this, standardising everything, and in so doing also running the risk of standardising cultures, traditions, and specific geographical and social characteristics, it instead remains weaker in its ability to have an impact on global scenarios, to have an authoritative position and credibility in crisis areas, to have a common foreign and security policy, to control its key supply chains, making itself increasingly vulnerable to external shocks.

The accuracy of this analysis can paradoxically be seen in the fact that, as the elections drew closer, some responses began to come along that went against this scenario I have just described, and in a positive way. The only problem was that it was too late, and those responses quite rightfully seemed more of an exception than the rule.

I therefore think it is clear to everyone that Europe is now facing a very difficult task: to completely rethink its priorities, its approach, its position, and rediscover its role in history, especially in the period we are currently going through.

I personally continue to believe that the response to this decline lies in the need to do less and do it better. Concentrating on a few, major issues, i.e. on those that Member States are not able to deal with alone, and leaving it instead up to the Member States to decide on matters that do not need to be centralised. Rather than a bureaucratic giant that multiplies rules that are unsustainable and sometimes even incompatible with the growth of its competitiveness, we should favour a political giant made strong by its thousand-year-old civilisation and aware of its unrivalled levels of excellence in many fields, and that supports its production systems to compete on the global stage, heads held high.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means that a Europe with a leading role in the world must ask itself, for example, how to increase its strategic autonomy, meaning its ability to build secure and reliable supply chains and thereby reduce its strategic dependencies. The dual crisis – the pandemic followed by the war in Ukraine – revealed just how wrong the idea was of a Europe whose role was almost exclusively to be a commercial platform, acting as an intermediary between American and the Asian giants and leaving it up to others to control value chains. When the shocks came along and those value chains, which were too long and not very reliable, were broken, Europe discovered that it was entirely vulnerable to events that it could neither predict nor control. With regard to key raw materials such as critical commodities, energy, and in several strategic sectors, we understood then the extent to which our destiny was linked to the will of other players who, unfortunately, are not always our friends. This had, and continues to have, dramatic consequences for our economic and production systems.

It is based on this awareness that the Government intends to address the work of this European Council meeting, starting with the very important agenda item regarding the EU strategic agenda 2024-2029, which is the framework of priorities Europe intends to set itself for the coming years. Italy asked for two key principles of the European constitution to be included in the strategic agenda’s introduction, and these have indeed been included, and they are the two principles we believe the European Parliament, Council and Commission should take most into the consideration in their work: the principle of subsidiarity and the principle of proportionality.
This means that the European Union must focus on the major strategic issues, on those issues and challenges for which it is essential to combine forces, and avoid dealing with areas in which Member States, also through their local structures, can achieve better results as they are closer to citizens.

This is also the reasoning behind why we successfully asked for the strategic agenda’s introduction to make reference to the issue of resources, because it is simply unthinkable for single Member States, even those in the best position in terms of fiscal capacity, to be able to make the investments needed for some of the great challenges Europe is facing, and claims it wants to tackle, on their own. I am of course thinking of the matter of boosting competitiveness, but also the energy and green transition, defence and security policy, and obviously also the management of migration flows.

In other words, we believe it is crucial for the Union to equip itself with adequate common resources and instruments in order to support the investments we are being called upon to make. Likewise, we consider it essential to encourage private investments, which today are inevitably directed towards markets that are proving to be more enterprising and dynamic.

The goal is to make Europe a place worth investing in, applying the principle that this Government is also applying in Italy, i.e., “do not disturb those wanting to get things done”. This means creating the conditions to allow those wanting to invest and do business to do so in the best way possible. It means managing to be more attractive than others, and this first and foremost involves getting rid of a lot of all that red tape that has ended up turning the European regulatory framework into an obstacle course for companies, especially for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, that are so often mentioned in the many declarations of principle in EU documents but are then often forgotten – or even penalised – when it’s time for the words to become facts. I think the new President of the European Commission should think about a specific mandate for streamlining bureaucracy and thus immediately send out a message about the change in direction he/she intends to take.

At the same time, it is necessary to draw up a strategy to protect European companies against unfair competition, to help them grow, to safeguard production and industrial chains and to defend brands and top-quality products and services, by putting into practice the principle that the market can only be free if it is also fair.

Much of Italy’s approach can be found in the strategic agenda with regard to one of the major issues Europe will have to deal with over the coming years. I am referring to the management of migration flows. The strategic agenda states that the EU’s priorities include defending its external borders, fighting mass irregular immigration and the commitment to stamp out the inhumane business of human traffickers who profit from people’s legitimate desire to look for better living conditions, a desire that is so often turned into tragedy by these cold-hearted, merciless slave traders of the third millennium, of course after they have pocketed some hefty earnings.

I believe that Europe, the cradle of western civilisation, can no longer tolerate the universal crime of slavery, which us Europeans were the first to eradicate all those centuries ago, existing in other forms. However, mass irregular immigration will never be stopped unless the nations of origin and of transit are also involved in the fight against the traffickers, as indeed Europe has already done – on Italy’s initiative – by signing memoranda of understanding with Egypt and Tunisia, and must continue to do by replicating this model in many other nations, and unless the reasons driving people to leave their homeland in the first place are addressed. In this regard, in its strategic agenda, the European Union undertakes to address the root causes of migration. In other words, a principle has been put down in black and white that we have been supporting for a long time, and that is the most important right we must guarantee: the right not to have to emigrate, being able to find the conditions to fulfil your potential in your own land.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to build a new cooperation model with African nations, so that they can grow and prosper with their own resources; cooperation among equals that can benefit everyone. We are satisfied that this approach is also included in the EU strategic agenda.

Italy has led the way on this approach with its Mattei Plan for Africa, which we are gradually implementing with structured synergies and work to connect it with other ongoing initiatives that share the same goal, both at European level with the European Union’s Global Gateway and at international level with the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, one of the strategic projects launched within the G7 for the development and economic growth of the most vulnerable nations, particularly in Africa and Asia. For example, through the EU Global Gateway, Italy has decided to help build the ‘Lobito Corridor’, a major infrastructure system that aims to connect Angola and Zambia through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thereby linking regional markets and global markets.

These are the solutions that African leaders, governments and peoples are asking us for. They are not asking us for charity nor that hypocritical and somewhat insincere solidarity that stops at those who manage to survive their ‘journeys of hope’, pretending instead not to see the ones who are too poor to be able to pay the traffickers to attempt a crossing.

Africans are not asking for our charity. They are asking us for investments and joint projects to carry out together. They are asking us for respect and concrete facts, and there is nothing more concrete than investing in infrastructure or in energy. In this regard, Italy has an advantage that can also become a strategic advantage for Europe as a whole. Our position as a natural platform in the Mediterranean offers us the opportunity to become a supply hub, acting as a bridge between the eastern Mediterranean, Africa and Europe. We are pursuing this goal through several ongoing projects that we intend to progressively roll out. Among all the others, I am thinking of the ELMED electricity interconnection between Italy and Tunisia, or the H2 South Corridor to transport hydrogen from North Africa to Europe.

The EU strategic agenda also deals with how to encourage legal migration, because the goal we are all setting ourselves is to re-establish legality in the management of migration flows. Legality means something simple, which has been forgotten too often in the past: you must only enter Italy, and Europe, legally. This also means that institutions are the ones to manage legal entries, not people smugglers. 

I would like to recall that Italy has planned for approximately 450 thousand legal entries in the 2023-2025 period, also to meet the needs of our production system, providing preferential quotas for the nations we are working with on migration regarding returns, combatting departures and fighting traffickers. I am thinking of Tunisia, for example, with whom we have signed an agreement that provides for simplified procedures for the issuance of visas and residence permits.

However, as well as planning a three-year decree to manage flows, we have also begun monitoring these flows, and the resulting evidence dramatically suggests that organised crime has infiltrated the management of residence permits for work purposes, which is why I have filed a complaint with the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor’s Office and announced changes to the law governing this matter. We will not allow mafia organisations to manage who enters Italy, as I fear they have been doing for some time, and I am frankly astonished that no one realised this before us.

Furthermore, I am convinced that, with regard to migration, Europe must seek innovative solutions, as indeed we have done in Italy. One such solution is undoubtedly the one we have indicated with the Italy-Albania protocol to process asylum applications on Albanian territory but under Italian and European jurisdiction. When I signed this protocol with Prime Minister Rama, whom I wish to thank once again in this hall for his great, European-spirited gesture, I hoped it would become a model, and we are proud to say it is now becoming one. In fact, the majority of EU Member States recently signed and sent a letter to the European Commission, asking the EU to follow the Italian model of the agreement with Albania. Even Germany, through the words of its Social-Democrat Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, stated it was following this agreement with interest.

There has been an evident step change on this, and I am proud of the contribution Italy has made in this direction in order to change course. In fact, I would just like to mention that, before this Government took office, discussions in Europe substantially focused on one point, and that was how to redistribute among the 27 EU Member States the immigrants arriving by boat above all to Italy.
Today the paradigm has completely changed, but it is crucial for this approach to become consolidated and structural over the coming months and years. Yesterday’s letter from Commission President von der Leyen to the Heads of State and Government goes in this direction, stating that this approach must remain a key priority also during the next institutional cycle.

The European Council will also discuss another strategic priority, which is how to have a security and defence policy that can meet the demands of Europe’s role on the global stage. For a long time, we were under the illusion that the peace within our borders guaranteed by the European integration process would also have spread to our neighbours. However, history turned out differently, as shown by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

We also basked in the idea that someone else would forever guarantee our security, but this was also a mistake and we must be aware of that. Hence why it is essential to speed up along the path towards a common industrial policy in the defence sector, boosting cooperation between our national champions with a view to European sovereignty.

Lastly, we must also take on our responsibilities: in these years of conflict and threats on Europe’s doorstep, we must remember that freedom and security come at a cost, and that we must be able to exert the necessary deterrence to reach the goal of having peace at our borders. This is all the more true if we set ourselves the ambitious, but in my view urgently needed, goal of building a solid European pillar of NATO, alongside the pillar of the United States, which can put us in a position to address new security challenges, including the threats involving the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Italian Government has always supported this position, and we will be conveying it also at the NATO Summit to be held in Washington in a few [weeks’] time.

Spending on defence means investing in our autonomy, in our ability to count and make decisions, in the best possible defence of our national interests. This is the path we believe Europe must follow in the coming years if it wants to live up to its mission in the world. However, also in this regard, in order to do so it is crucial to address the issue of having the necessary resources to make the long-awaited leap forward.

In this regard, we welcomed the steps forward made in the European Investment Bank’s financing policies, and it is our hope that the EIB can further increase investments in defence too, while safeguarding its full capacity to raise funds on international markets. I believe discussions are also necessary to come up with innovative solutions, including opening up to the possibility of having European bonds for this kind of investment. We will be looking into and carefully evaluating the financing options the Commission will be presenting to us at this European Council meeting.

The European Union’s security and defence needs are closely linked to the EU enlargement process, or – as you know I prefer to call it – reunification. This is one of the items on the agenda, and Italy supports the path towards Europe for all candidates: the Western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia. We expressed our support for the first intergovernmental conferences to be called that will formally open negotiations for Ukraine and Moldova, and we are keeping dialogue open with Georgia, hoping that it can review the steps taken with its recent legislation on so-called ‘foreign agents’. The accession process for all candidate nations must of course remain anchored to respect for European values and gradual alignment to the European Union’s political and economic standards. 

The European Council will once again confirm its support for the Ukrainian cause, because defending Ukraine is in Europe’s interest and means defending the rules-based system that keeps the international community together and protects all nations.

It is worth reiterating that, had Ukraine been forced to surrender, today the minimum conditions for negotiations would not exist, and we would instead be discussing the invasion of a sovereign state, with the consequences we can all imagine. Peace never means surrender, and confusing peace with submission would create a dangerous precedent for everyone. I wish to state again in this hall, as I did at the G7 and at the peace conference in Switzerland, that all our efforts are aimed at helping Ukraine look to the future. A future of peace, prosperity and well-being. I believe it was very important to reach a political agreement within the G7 on using the interest generated by frozen Russian assets to guarantee a loan that the United States will grant to Ukraine. Europe will be called upon to make this political commitment feasible from a technical point of view, and this is a key step not only to provide immediate support but also because a possible negotiation process will also have to clarify who needs to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction. 

In this regard, Europe’s commitment to guaranteeing access to commercial ports and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea is fundamental; these elements are a must for Ukraine to be able to export grain and for global food security.

It is in Europe’s interest to make every effort for peace to be reached in the Middle East, and this can only be based on the ‘two peoples, two States’ principle, with Israel’s right to live in peace and without attacks being fully recognised by all regional players, and the right of the Palestinian people to have their own State to make grow and prosper. As was also reiterated in the Leaders’ communiqué at the end of the G7 Summit, Italy supports the mediation proposal by the United States, assisted by the cooperation of Egypt and Qatar, for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages and a significant increase in humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza. In this respect, however, Europe can and must play a much more active role.

A Europe that is aware of its geopolitical role simply has to pay renewed attention to what is happening in the Mediterranean, which is finding a new central importance and rediscovering its ancient vocation as a crossroads of strategic interconnections - commercial, energy and digital interconnections. This is also why we are convinced that the European Union of tomorrow must make its relationship with the Southern Neighbourhood an external action priority, because the Mediterranean is our home, and it would be self-destructive not to take care of it, or worse, to hand it over to other players.

One of the priorities citizens have asked for through their votes is to bring common sense and pragmatism back to the green and energy transition, by revisiting the most ideological regulations in the ‘Green Deal’ and making sure there is technological neutrality. 

As I have said many times, we are the first ones to defend nature, but we want to defend it with people inside.

In recent years, the exact opposite has often been done instead. Human activities have too often been considered harmful to the environment, and the ‘green’ approach has been pursued even at the cost of sacrificing entire production and industrial supply chains, like in the automotive industry. No one has ever denied that electric vehicles can be part of the solution to decarbonise transport, but it doesn’t make any sense to ban ourselves from producing petrol and diesel cars from 2035 onwards and effectively condemn ourselves to new strategic dependencies, such as Chinese electric vehicles. Claiming otherwise was simply ideological madness, that we will work to correct. We want to pursue the path to reduce polluting emissions, but with common sense and a practical approach, making the most of all technologies available and without taking action at the expense of economic and social sustainability, while defending and thereby enhancing European production activities and safeguarding tens of thousands of jobs.

With the same approach, we fought to change the directive regarding ‘green’ housing, in relation to which we managed to get rid of the obligation for owners to change energy efficiency class. The directive’s goals remain, but they are still too close together and too expensive, especially in the absence of European incentives. This is all the more true for Italy, which is having to deal with the huge hole in the public purse created by the ‘110% Superbonus’ tax incentive scheme. Another of our priorities is to revisit this piece of legislation too.

One of this Government’s priorities is also to bring back due respect in the European institutions for the men and women who have been living and working in nature for generations, as indeed we have often done in the European Council. I am talking about farmers, breeders, fishers, and all those individuals whose work ensures people have enough food to survive, and who also carry out precious work to look after the natural surroundings in which they operate. It has happened too often in recent years that these entrepreneurs have been hit by strongly ideological legislative measures. It was only the fact that the European elections were around the corner, combined with our Government’s decisive action, that allowed for an initial, albeit insufficient, rethink regarding the mistakes that have negatively affected them. Such mistakes must not happen again.

I would like to take advantage of this point to reflect with you about an extremely serious incident that has left me appalled, as I’m sure it has you. I am talking about the awful, inhumane death of Satnam Singh, the 31-year-old agricultural worker from India; an awful and inhumane death for the atrocious way it happened, but all the more so for his employer’s disgusting attitude. We have to say it: this is Italy at its worst, profiting from desperate migrants and the plague of unregulated immigration. The shameful practice of workers being exploited in this way is far from being defeated, despite efforts by governments made up of different parties.

We intend to continue fighting this. I would like to recall that one of the first decrees this Government approved concerned social conditions and introduced sanctions relating to EU aid for companies that do not comply with rules governing labour, safety and the protection of workers’ health, just as I would like to remind you that it was this Government that made the unlawful supply of labour a criminal offence again; this had been decriminalised back in 2016 by the Renzi Government at the time, and our inspections found it to be the offence that had grown the most.

We have also increased the number of workplace inspectors and Carabinieri officers deployed to the labour protection unit, and have lifted the freeze on inspector roles at INPS [National Social Security Institute] and INAIL [National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work], which had been blocked by previous governments. I would also like to take this opportunity to announce that we intend to bring forward the planned hiring process for positions at INPS and INAIL, aimed precisely at boosting inspection activities. We also intend to introduce, earlier than planned, an IT system against such exploitation of workers, which will enable us to link all databases in order to intensify our work to monitor and fight this phenomenon. So, harsher penalties for criminals and much tougher controls. However, we also intend to enhance the quality agricultural network with the help, and increased responsibility, of representatives from trade unions and employers’ associations. In a nation that functions from both an economic and social point of view, everyone must do their part: us as lawmakers, as well as those who represent the backbone of Italy’s production chain.

Building a strong Europe with a leading role in the world also means addressing the challenge on which probably all others depend: the demographic challenge. The ‘demographic winter’ is affecting all of Europe and no nation currently reaches the ‘replacement rate’, i.e., the number of children per woman needed to guarantee population continuity. So, we would like it if we could all address this challenge together, to prevent the historical label of the ‘Old Continent’ from becoming an ominous prediction for the future.

Hence why we believe Europe must, now, also address the issue of how to consider investments to boost the birth rate. We are convinced that every euro spent on the birth rate, on services and help for families and on the work-life balance, is a euro spent in a productive investment, because it is an investment in the very future of our social systems, in Italy and Europe alike. There is not much point in ensuring a balanced budget for a financial year or for a seven-year period if the entire system is to become unsustainable in the medium-long term, if that ‘next generation’ after which the EU named its post-pandemic recovery plans is missing, as it risks simply not existing. One of the great revolutions the Europe of tomorrow must pursue is precisely to finally, and firmly, take on the demographic challenge.

The Government will fight for the issue of the birth rate to be specifically included among the priorities of the EU strategic agenda.
Many of these priorities are included in the programme of the Hungarian rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union which, as you know, will begin in a few days’ time. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to discuss these priorities in-depth also with Prime Minister Orbán, who was visiting Rome, Paris and Berlin.

To advance this ambitious agenda, however, common political will is needed. It is not so much a problem of rules, but rather a matter of vision and, in this regard, I’ll go back to what I was saying at the beginning of my address.
In the recently held elections, citizens clearly stated which model they prefer, between the one that has been pursued until now and the one we are proposing, between a Europe of lowering to compromises to one of rising to challenges. One indisputable fact that emerged from those elections was the rejection of the policies pursued by governing powers in many major European nations, which are also very often the same powers that have shaped EU policies over these years.

This negative opinion can be seen in the proportion of seats won by governing parties compared with the total number of elected members: in France, government forces elected only 16% of MEPs for that nation; in Germany that figure was 32%, in Spain 34%. Italy was the only large European nation to have a positive figure, with almost 53% of elected MEPs representing its governing powers.

There are of course those who claim that citizens are not mature enough to make certain decisions and that oligarchy is the only acceptable form of democracy, but I am not of this opinion. I have fought this surreal principle in Italy, and I intend to fight it in Europe too.

In other words, we are convinced that the population is always right and that it is the duty of anyone holding a position of responsibility to follow the indications provided by citizens. I personally do not see any alternatives to democracy, and I will always fight those wanting to exalt an oligarchic and technocratic view of politics and society, in this case also at European level. I am not surprised that others do this, sometimes because this belongs to their cultural background, and in other cases because this interpretation allows them to try to hold on to power, even from a position of weakness.

I am not surprised this approach emerged before, during and after the election campaign. However, this is not something that can leave us indifferent, especially not in a House of Parliament, because no genuine democrat who believes in the sovereignty of the people, as enshrined in Article 1 of the Italian Constitution, can sincerely believe it is acceptable for negotiations regarding the top jobs in Europe to have been attempted even before citizens went to the polls. Then we ask ourselves why citizens do not consider it important to go out and vote.

As always, I shall say what I think. So far, there doesn’t seem to me to have been any willingness to take what citizens said at the ballot box into account, neither with regard to method nor in terms of substance. With regard to substance, I took the liberty of pointing out that I found it surreal that, at the first meeting of the European Council after the elections, albeit informal, some came along already with proposals for names for the top jobs, resulting from discussions between certain parties, without even pretending to want to begin a discussion about what indications had come from citizens at the polls. Before discussing who should do what, we should discuss what it is we want to do, and only afterwards then choose the best person to turn those indications into a reality.

This brings me to the method. As if citizens hadn’t given different indications, over the last few hours, and indeed during the election campaign, many have claimed that talks shouldn’t be entered into with certain political groups, who, I would like to point out, are the very ones to have received growing support at these elections.

With regard to this matter, allow me to take a step back. In the past, European institutions have never been designed according to a ‘majority and opposition’ logic. They were designed as neutral bodies, therefore able to act as a guarantee for all Member States, regardless of the political stance of said Member States’ governments. So the top jobs – the Presidents of the Council, Commission and Parliament plus the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – were normally given taking into consideration the largest groups, and therefore taking into consideration the election results, regardless of any majority or opposition-based logic, because the ‘majority and opposition’ logic emerges in Parliament, with majorities which, incidentally, change from dossier to dossier, given the complexity of the European context. 

Today, the choice is being made to open a completely new scenario. The consensus-based logic, which has always underpinned the majority of EU decisions, is losing out to a logic of ‘fireside discussions’ whereby a few think they can decide for everyone, both for those belonging to an opposing political side and for nations deemed too small to be worthy of a place at the tables that count. A sort of ‘conventio ad excludendum’ European-style, which on behalf of the Italian Government I have openly contested and do not intend to accept.

If we want to serve Europe and its credibility well, we must show that we have understood past mistakes and give the utmost consideration to the indications received from citizens at the polls. Even though some perhaps prefer to ignore them, those indications are very clear: citizens are asking for a more concrete and less ideological Europe. However, the mistake that is about to be made, by imposing this logic and having a majority that is, among other things, weak and likely to have difficulties during the European legislative term, is a significant mistake indeed. Not for me or for the centre-right, and not even just for Italy, but for a Europe that does not seem to understand the challenge it is facing, or it does understand but nevertheless prefers to prioritise other things.

I do not intend to support a position that is different from the one I believe in, simply to ask in return for a role that Italy is rightfully entitled to. As I’m sure you will understand, I shan’t go into the details of the many conversations I have had over the last few days, and will continue to have; I just want to say that we have asked, and will ask again, for a political step change, first and foremost, in line with the message received from voters. And then of course we intend to fight for Italy. 

We are a founding member of the EU, Italy’s economy is the third largest in Europe, our manufacturing industry is the second largest on the continent, we are the third biggest Member State in terms of population, we are leaders in very many fields and, today, we can count on newfound political stability and economic soundness, allowing us to shake off the too many prejudices we were subjected to before.

Drawing strength from who we are and what Italy can aspire to be, my hope is that we can act with unity on this, and to work as a team to ensure our nation is represented in the best way possible when it comes to the top positions in the European Union. In other words, we must work to ensure we get what is due to Italy as a nation; not to the Government, not to one party or another, but to the nation. The significance of our role has not always been given enough recognition in the past, but citizens gave us a clear message at the polls, and we do not intend to let it go unheard.

Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]