On Wednesday, Italy took over the presidency of the EU, taken
up in turn every six months by a member state. PM Matteo Renzi opened the Italian semester with a speech in Brussels.
Renzi’s speech did not focus on the programmatic issues that
Italy wants to work on during its presidency. The programme, he said, was
printed and he would offer it to the council so that he wouldn’t have to go
through it during his speech. Instead, Renzi gave a speech meant to be inspirational,
because, while financial and economic issues mattered a lot to Italy,
he wants this semester to be about more than finance.
Renzi addressing the European Parliament
Renzi opened by stating that “If Europe took a selfie today,
it would show a face of tiredness, of resignation. In one word, a face of
boredom”.
He continued by stating that when we think of the EU, all that
comes to mind is the spread and the financial crisis. Because of this, “the
real challenge our continent is facing today is the need to find again Europe’s soul,
the deep meaning of being together”. He added that there is no point in
unifying only our bureaucracies, because in that case “we Italians have enough
of our own bureaucracy”.
He then mentioned the “Stability and Growth Pact” in the
most controversial passage of his speech, claiming that on top of stability
there must be growth as that is fundamental for the EU as a whole.
In his speech, Renzi also urged the UK not to leave the EU
because “Europe without the UK would be less rich, less Europe, less itself”.
He also said that Europe is physically a frontier, and he reminded
the problem of migrants from North Africa, a real challenge for Italy these
days. He added that he hopes that the EU will be seen not only as a place of
investments and wealth, but in light of its human dimension, because Europe
represents “a lighthouse of civilization” and we should be proud of this.
Renzi closed his speech by stating that we are a “Telemachus
Generation”, referring to Ulysses’s son who spent years trying to find out
where his father was and looking for him before he went back to Ithaca. Renzi
said that we need to deserve the legacy of our fathers, seen not as gift but
as a conquest to renew every day.
Inspirational as it was, Renzi’s speech has attracted various,
legitimate criticisms claiming that he was just speaking empty words rather
than focusing on facts, for his choice of not discussing the programme. Also,
his insistence on the importance of growth caused the German Bundesbank to
state that accumulating debt does not create growth. This point is likely to
lead to huge disagreements between Italy and Germany, and while today the
Italian Minister of Economy Padoan stated that “Everything is ok with Germany”,
new arguments are certainly ahead of us.
Some bits of the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fxze6FglKA
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