The responsibilities of the affirmation of populism in Europe

The speech by the Italian premier to the European Parliament in Strasbourg highlighted the distance that the Rome executive produced with the institutions of the Union and the major European countries. Although there are real reasons behind this attitude: the perception that the Union is an expression of the financial elites, the distance from the European people of parliamentary decisions, the excessive decision-making power of Germany, especially in the area of ​​taxation of the tax rules, the methods adopted by the Italian government to combat this state of affairs have proved to be unsuitable and wrong. Italy has moved away from the members who founded the European Community, to which it belongs, in order to get closer to the Eurosceptic countries of Eastern Europe, which use the Union only for reasons of convenience and which, to prove the facts, have proved unreliable allies for Rome, offering no help to Italy on the issue of migrants. If from an institutional point of view tactics are wrong, the attitude of the parties to the government seems even worse, because it is characterized by a mixture of extreme positions and incompetence, which disqualify Italy, as an international subject. It should be recognized that the starting point for criticism of Europe is based on real and indisputable aspects, such as the abandonment of the Italian country on the issue of migrants, which is accompanied by a massive dose of hypocrisy in the management of the phenomenon, as well as the continued application of strict rules on budget balance has produced a significant worsening of the middle and popular classes, reasons that have caused the growth of populist and anti-Europeanist movements. The Italian anomaly is that in Rome the first government of that type took office in one of the most important countries of the Union, something very different from the Polish and Hungarian cases. However, the institutions of Brussels did not adopt a conciliatory behavior that could compress the danger but fostered the escalation of the clash. The impression is that the eurocrats have chosen to attack the Italian government frontally to prevent the recurrence of similar cases in other countries. If this reading is right, it is necessary to consider the English aversion to the Union, which caused its detachment, the phenomena of violent protest, which have been going on for some time in France, the deep dissatisfaction of the German people, also because of a forecast of a significant drop in economic growth, the growth of populist and anti European movements even in the Scandinavian countries, where the quality of life has always been higher. The almost imminent European elections are likely to sanction Community policies in recent years, producing a division that will be difficult to remedy. If the European institutions continue to have an attitude of superiority, in some cases even justified, towards these political phenomena, the traditional parties, both of the liberal right and of the left, seem little able to provide alternative solutions to this permanent confrontation with the forces populist. On the other hand it is difficult not to charge the responsibility of those who supported the policy choices, especially economic, of the Union and did not know how to act transversely between the states to allow the necessary autonomy of Europe, able to make it become , finally, an independent subject, with its own structures, to oppose the US of Trump, Russian intrusiveness and establish an equal relationship with China. These conditions are all indispensable to allow a fight against economic inequality, which is the first problem to be solved within the Union, including through a foreign policy capable of imposing the European point of view and through this attracting the investments necessary for the management of emergencies. which must be treated in an organic and not separate manner, according to the interests of the individual states. Italy suffers a sloppy and incapable government, not only because of its previous executives, but also for a European policy contrary to the interests of citizens and businesses; this problem is now in Rome, but it is not excluded that in the future it will affect Paris or Berlin and if this were to happen the regression of Europe would be inevitable and the responsibilities very precise.