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The stakes of the European vote on Saturday and Sunday are not clear to all citizens, but not even – and this is more serious – to all parties. Which is not only the tenth time, since the first elections in 1979, that Italians will be asked to decide who to send to Strasbourg from the carousel of lists and candidates. Nor will we go to the polls to establish whether the work of the institutions of the large and consolidated European Union, of which the European Parliament still represents a slight pillar, but an expression of popular and continental will, that is, the most democratic face of Europe, should consist in imposing on Europeans the cap attached to plastic bottles.
Not understanding that the annoyance created for consumers by this abstruse and ridiculous directive exceeds the right objective we wanted to pursue: to induce citizens not to throw away one of the disposable products that is most often found on beaches and then ends up polluting the oceans.
This time, irritating trifles are not at stake, nor the routine statistics of a European Parliament that still has too little weight, and for this reason we are witnessing the growing abstention of voters.
Instead, 8 and 9 June 2024 will be the last call on Europe that we would like to have: a pure and impotent geographical expression dedicated to bottle caps? Or the natural projection (projection, not cancellation) of the national states that have become a Union so as not to succumb to Covid and the economic crises, to terrorism and Putin, to the risks of artificial intelligence and the difficulties of uncontrolled immigration, that is, to the world as it is is it, and what does the common front imply for those who recognize themselves in free Western civilization?
Mazzini and De Gasperi intuited Italy’s European destiny and was shaped by the desire to live in peace after two world wars. But today Europe lives because it is our home: the strongest and safest place to face the great commercial challenges – China is nearby – of the time that has already arrived. We are already Europeans, because we are Italians forever.
This is why the controversy that the League opened with the head of state, Sergio Mattarella, sounds grotesque, reproaching him for having spoken, referring to the upcoming European elections, of a “sovereignty to be consecrated with that vote” on the eve of Republic Day.
“Today is not the celebration of EU sovereignty,” accused senator Claudio Borghi, asking for his resignation if that was the president’s position. And Matteo Salvini: “Today we are not celebrating the European Union of multinationals who want to put Made in Italy out of the norm.”
Do they really fear that Mattarella wants to move the Quirinale to Brussels? Who wants to give up the Italian spirit, the beautiful identity of a unique country in the world, just reaffirmed with the parade at the Imperial Forums?
“But do me a favor,” Totò would say.
Published in L’Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza, Bresciaoggi and Gazzetta di Mantova
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