(ANSAmed) - FLORENCE, MAY 7 - The current Europe Union lacks
solidarity, a true common interior policy and even more so, a
common foreign and defense policy, and must regain its standing
and capacity to take decisions.
If he were alive today, this kind of Union would make
Italian statesman Alcide de Gasperi say: "Mamma mia!..." pointed
out Romani Prodi, imagining the reaction of one of the EU's
founding fathers during the first day of the The State of the
Union, a conference organised in Florence by the European
University Institute.
The former Italian premier spoke with ex Italian president
Giorgio Napolitano about the lack "of a strong conception of
solidarity, a feeling of togetherness and the sharing of common
mission in the world at large".
According to the former Italian head of state Napolitano,
De Gasperi was "very forward-looking" in his vision for Europe
and his outlook "is as true today as is it was 50 years ago".
"He certainly wouldn't be pleased", stressed Prodi.
On the occasion of the official launch of the Research
Centre Alcide De Gasperi, Napolitano warned the Italian
political class that "democracy means that the majority
shoulders the responsibility to decide" and underlined that the
recent approval of Premier Matteo Renzi's Italicum electoral law
"was fundamental" and an "important achievement".
Europe's decision-making deficit in foreign policy is huge
and this is a field in which "the instruments are there, but
what is lacking is political will" maintained Napolitano
answering a question put to him by ANSA's deputy editor-in-chief
Stefano Polli, who moderated the debate.
Napolitano also spoke about the painful lot of migrants and
called Europe's common response "insignificant," saying that
"the latest EU summit proposed very vague instruments" to
address the crisis.
Prodi agreed and said Europe appeared hamstrung.
He criticised Brussels and stressed that "when Europe's
leadership is content with being a barometer following the
vagaries of public opinion" the Old Continent becomes a "Europe
of fear".
Prodi did not mince his words either while speaking about
Greece "which fiddled its accounts because Germany, France and
Italy let it do so".
Delving into the migrant issue, Foreign Ministry
Undersecretary Sandro Gozi denounced "the hefty costs of a
Europe which does not act like Europe has."
But he defended the results of the extraordinary EU summit
called for by Matteo Renzi and said that "Italy has finally won
its battle, the first one".
"The Mediterranean," Gozi added, "is not an Italian
frontier but a European one".
However, Gozi agreed that in Europe "there is no
solidarity left", whereas "this is the key word of the Schuman
Declaration" - the declaration that 65 years ago set the
revolutionary path towards what eventually became the European
Union.
Nowadays, as a result of the economic crisis and the fears
it engendered, the gap between European people and the EU
institutions has widened and in this climate, the Florence event
marked the beginning of a new "narrative" for a "better and more
secure future".
The new Schuman Declaration drafted by Giuliano Amato
together with former French European affairs minister Elisabeth
Guigou and ex Lithuanian president Vaira-Vike Freiberga is a
testament to this.
The EU, states the Declaration, "must convincingly prove
that a Europe united in solidarity offers the best response and,
in the some cases, the only effective one".
Europe 'must start taking decisions again if wants to count'
Foreign policy,solidarity debated at Florence State of the Union