Mattarella's "Nessun Dorma" to the EU: "Late on common defense, do it urgently"
COIMBRA – “Nessun dorma”, sings the tenor. Sergio Mattarella listens to him in the room and relaunches the famous invocation of Turandot: “It could be applied to our Union”. The President of the Republic and Mario Draghi try to give Europe a jolt, from the Cotec summit in Coimbra . React, says Draghi, who speaks for half an hour. Focus on internal competitiveness, relying on three directions: energy, defense, technology. With tariffs “we are at a breaking point”. With Trump nothing will be the same again. The multilateral order has been undermined “in a way that is difficult to reverse” with the massive use “of unilateral actions to resolve trade disputes and the definitive disempowerment of the WTO”. An agreement must be reached with the US, but in the awareness that “our trade will not return to normal”. And therefore “if Europe really wants to reduce its dependence on US growth, it will have to produce it itself. Change the macroeconomic policy framework”.
The former prime minister speaks at the Coimbra symposium, the summit on innovation that sees the heads of state of Italy, Portugal and Spain as protagonists.
Sergio Mattarella, who speaks immediately after, also insists on the same concept: "Europe must act, because standing still is no longer an option. The risks of immobility, well identified in the Draghi Report and the Letta Report, and the hypothetical consequences for Europe, in terms of a retreat in the material conditions of widespread well-being or an irreversible departure from the technological frontier".
For Mattarella, "Europe cannot remain at the stake", insisting once again on the common European Defense. "We are late".
The harmony between the two is profound. Many parts of their speeches overlap. Yesterday they traveled together from Rome. Draghi was present at the honorary doctorate ceremony. Theirs is a passionate and demanding Europeanism.
Draghi raises the energy alarm: “High energy prices and grid shortages are, first and foremost, a threat to the survival of our industry, a major obstacle to our competitiveness and an unsustainable burden for our families and, if not addressed, represent the main threat to our decarbonisation strategy”.
He warns that European citizens “are acutely aware of the crisis”. They need “less privileges and more innovation”.
Draghi makes a political speech. Rich in data. He points the finger at “internal political fragmentations” and “weak growth” in the eurozone: peculiarities “that have made an effective European response more difficult”.
How did we end up in the hands of American consumers?, he asks.
“We need to open up new trade routes, but realistically we cannot diversify from the US in the short term. Hopes that openness to the world can replace the US will probably be dashed.”
In the long run, trade with the United States is indispensable, but “it is a gamble to believe that trade with the United States will return to normal after such a major unilateral rupture of this relationship, or that new markets will grow fast enough to fill the void left by the United States. If Europe really wants to be less dependent on US growth, it will have to produce it itself.”
The recipe? If we want to be more independent from the US, we need to produce more growth.
Then the former president of the ECB discusses the reasons for our weakness. He lists them in a row. Restrictive budget policies. Decline in public investments. Attention to external competitiveness compared to internal productivity.
Our wages have fallen inexorably, Draghi points out. Here the words of Sergio Mattarella in his May Day speech are echoed. Draghi recalls that while "real US wages have increased by 9 percent since 2000 compared to those of the euro area".
La Repubblica
