Sovereigntists prepare to storm Brussels

A contradiction in terms: why should anyone promoting nation states want to enter the European parliament? And to do what? We explain why the sovereigntist block won’t break through on May 26

For the first part of this editorial I’ll refer to the rationale outlined by Mario Draghi last February at the University of Bologna, in an address which we will one day recognise as a milestone on the teaching of European Union perspectives. I will be quoting large sections from it.

As European citizens, for the past 10 years we have had to fight off one of the most profound economic and financial crises even, and this has gradually dimmed our perception of the benefits of integration and brought to the fore the costs, associated with a supposed loss of national sovereignty. In actual fact – Draghi reminds us – “there is an inherent trade-off between EU membership and the ability of countries to exercise sovereignty”.

This is a fundamental point, which was the main bone of contention I raised during my video-interview with Steve Bannon, who tried in vain to convince me that the future of the European communities depends on us being able to restore our national sovereignties. He had a hard time justifying the simultaneous praising of America first, the Trumpian claim, in what is an extremely federated United States of America….

We have to beware – Draghi added – “not to conflate independence with sovereignty: the latter is reflected in the ability to control outcomes and respond to the fundamental needs of the people.  The ability to make independent decisions does not guarantee countries such control. In other words, independence does not guarantee sovereignty. Countries that are completely shut off from the global economy are independent but not sovereign in any meaningful sense – often relying on external food aid to feed their people. Yet being connected through globalisation also increases the vulnerability of individual countries so they must work together to exercise sovereignty, especially if they belong to the European Union.”

Besides the mild criticism of European technocrats and of powers apparently pulling strings in the background, European sovereigntists have often disagreed among each other: Salvini has met Marine Le Pen just once, but then she did not attend the first Convention for a Common Sense Europe promoted by Salvini in Milan (what a missed opportunity). Perhaps because his northern colleagues have very little time for her. Orban too was nowhere to be seen, and the Poles in attendance were few and treading very carefully.

The three sovereigntist sub-families – Europe of Nations and Freedom (Salvini’s League and Le Pen’s Rapprochement National), Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (Alternative for Germany and 5 Star Movement) and the Conservatives and Reformers (Post-Fascist Fratelli d’Italia, the Poles of the Right and Justice Party, the Danish Populist Party and the True Finns) – each eye each other with suspicion: on economic and social issues for example, it will be hard to reach agreements, seeing as the DNA of the individual parties is about defending national interests, with the Northerners by no means acquiescent on Italian accounting and on the populist recipes promoted by the Yellow-Green government.

The co-leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, has often stated that Germany does not intend to pay Italian debts.

Then there’s the migrant issue, that divides the countries of initial reception from those in the north. “We don’t want to redistribute migrants, we just want to control our borders”, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister replies fairly curtly to those who remind him that partly thanks to his friends the Dublin regulation stands unchanged. No distribution of migrants then, even if the fair allocation of asylum seekers among all EU countries was in the government contract signed by the League and the 5 Star Movement. The battle fought by Italy against an unsympathetic European Union obviously led to nothing, seeing as Salvini’s allies are the last ones prepared to listen to any cries of help from initial reception countries.

Then there’s Putin dividing the sovereigntist camp, to the extent that the Italian Minister of the Interior, in order not to scare off his Finnish and Polish allies of Pls, had to reassert at his Milan April convention that the current alliances are not up for discussion and that his position on European sanctions against Russia are just his own personal opinion.

Therefore, how sovereigntists will produce the reforms that will grace us with a “Europe of peoples, free to live their own identity”, is unclear, because there are very few shared recipes, and besides the fear of the invader, they come in more or less extremist shades.

Another novelty is that there’s absolutely no talk of any kind of Euro exit any longer. On 23 June 2016, the day of the historical referendum in the United Kingdom, Salvini tweeted enthusiastically: “A cheer for the courage of free citizens. Heart, mind and pride defeat lies, threats and blackmail. Thanks UK, now it’s our turn”. Pity then that three years later the United Kingdom is in the throes of an unprecedented political and institutional chaos and some of its economic indicators are unavoidably tottering. The true Brexit has kicked in with its dramatic overtones and those previously uncorking the champagne are having second thoughts. The approaching elections have normalised all the sovereigntists towards a more European approach: Europe surely needs changing, but leaving is not advisable, especially now that some of these anti-establishment forces are now in government.

Therefore Europe moves ahead as does the Euro (the latest polls indicate that as many as 75% of European citizens are in favour of the euro). Even the protesting Visegrad group, who are much too keen on Brussels’ structural funds to think of going it alone, no longer question its existence.

In actual fact the sovereigntist camp hasn’t even decided which areas of sovereignty should be taken away from Brussel’s control and returned to the nation states: obviously enough the sovereigntist manifesto will still be a while in the drafting and there are many issues that still need solving. Perhaps the issues can be summed up with the words of Anders Vistisen of the Danish People’s Party, one of Salvini’s chums, who , after their meeting in Milan, stated, “… if you don’t believe in this project, our Euro-bureaucracy opponents will win out. And jeopardize our national identities”.

We hope that Vistisen will get a chance to read Draghi’s speech in Bologna, which explains the difference between independence and sovereignty, providing hard currency examples of the importance of the integration process: “The European Union accounts for 16.5% of global economic output, second only to China, which gives European countries a large domestic market to fall back on in the event of trade disruptions. And the euro is the world’s second-most traded international currency, which helps insulate the euro area economy from exchange rate volatility”.

On 26 May we will be choosing our representatives to the European Parliament among those who at least can understand these words, and can therefore lead us towards an efficient system of government that can be of use in guaranteeing growth and fairer distribution of wealth, and particularly adept at handling the regular crises and so called asymmetric shocks, that are the most threatening to the income levels of the middle classes and of those who have less.

@GiuScognamiglio

This article is also published in the May/June issue of eastwest.

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