Building a Europe from below to stay there

An astonished Ferruccio De Bortoli, a moderate and pro-European analyst, with his "27 July 2025, a day to be ashamed of... Why remain in a Union that lets itself be treated like that?" (Corriere della Sera) expresses the bewilderment generated by the disastrous outcome of the negotiations on tariffs and the further concessions granted to the United States. The response coming from the same circle of opinion leaders as the daily paper from Via Solferino is as swift as ever. As if to exorcise such discouragement as soon as possible, thus avoiding reinforcing, instead, what the most tenacious anti-Europeans wish for.

First of all Mario Monti ('The lost honour and redemption'), who asks us all, and perhaps De Bortoli in primis, to react. Quoting Jean Monnet - 'defeats are only those that you accept' - and Franklin Delano Roosevelt - 'the only thing we have to fear is fear itself' -, the former prime minister asks President Von der Leyen to 'have a burst of pride and frankness' and to do three things: to adopt a global minimum tax to combat tax avoidance by multinationals, to adopt a digital tax and to ask some European countries to form, with other countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, an ideal political nucleus to govern globalisation together. In short, Europe should react to its existential crisis with two taxes and a new alliance for a global agenda to disintermediate itself. Too little? Yes.

Again in the Corriere della Sera, Angelo Panebianco calls instead for the avoidance of litanies such as 'we should do this, ... do that', typical of those who still support the United States of Europe and, after a similar suggestion for EU cooperation with other countries, points to a new unambitious Europeanism, which does not collide with national democracies, to respond to the evident state of continental crisis. Too little? Yes.

Too little because to the righteous cry of pain of De Bortoli and the people of Europe, the intellectual must not respond with litanies or political cynicism, but must propose an alternative that is up to the challenge.

Monti is right to quote Monnet and Roosevelt because they both have something to say about how federations, like the one we aspire to be, should deal with moments of crisis. Monnet had a way of reminding us how what we now call the EU was born out of a great revolution of our time, which aimed to 'replace national rivalries with a union of peoples in freedom and diversity'. Freedom therefore to be different among equals, each member state contributing to the enrichment of all, with its own culture, history, traditions. How much have we invested in these two words, freedom and diversity, in building our Union? How much, in the last two decades, which have seen the growth of anti-European sovereignty, have we allowed each nation to cultivate and give weight to its own needs instead of insisting on arid standardisations and common rules applied to countries in an obvious state of economic, social and political diversity? Little. Franklin Delano Roosevelt then combated that fear he cited in a concrete manner, with expansive fiscal policies in deficit, restoring confidence to citizens and businesses by means of the visible public hand. This is a recipe that is invisible not only to the austere Mario Monti but also to the entire European Commission of technicians who guide us from Brussels.