The British withdrawal boosts Italy as an essential link between Paris and Berlin. The Mediterranean now carries
more weight than the Channel.
Italy’s desire to be in the European driver’s seat alongside France and Germany is a story of ambitions, failures and disappointments. The tale is fatally interwoven with the domestic Italian political situation, which has too often only served to offer Europe examples of the country’s lack of reliability and foresight. Intermittent invitations have been made for the Italians to join the French and Germans up front, but they have almost always been expressions of approval of this or that Italian premier.
Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, it has been noted, was not a welcome guest in the elite club of European Union leaders. First Germany’s Gerhard Schröder and then Angela Merkel considered him to be a partycrasher (or worse, an anomaly) in the project of building Europe, as did France’s Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. Many people still remember the emblematic exchange of smirks between Merkel and Sarkozy during a press conference when a foreign journalist asked about Berlusconi. But the mood changed immediately once il cavaliere had moved on, and in a clear sign that the governments of Europe approved of the Italian ‘regime change’, Merkel and Sarkozy invited then Prime Minister Mario Monti to a meeting in Strasbourg on 24 November 2011. Only a few weeks earlier, at the G20 meeting in
Cannes, Berlusconi had requested face-to-face meetings with Merkel, Sarkozy and Obama. None of the three leaders had responded. Berlusconi was, however, contacted by the director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, who announced the imminent arrival of the troika in Rome to install a commissioner for Italy’s public accounts.
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The British withdrawal boosts Italy as an essential link between Paris and Berlin. The Mediterranean now carries
more weight than the Channel.
