De Luca Jr, the EU and Gentiloni and Casini’s wake-up call to the jubilant broad coalition

Rome. It is the day after – or rather, the morning after – that Tuesday evening which had the centre-left dreaming thanks to the centre-right’s own goal regarding the new electoral law, but dreaming does not mean disregarding the nuances. All the more so if those nuances reflect some not insignificant differences of opinion on fundamental issues. Perhaps this is why Pierferdinando Casini, an independent senator elected on the PD ticket, is prodding those on the left who are willing to listen during the presentation of the book "L’idea di Europa e il suo destino – dalle origini alle sfide globali del XXI secolo" (published by Mondadori), written by the PD MP and legal scholar Piero De Luca, son of Vincenzo (who is following the event from the front row), in the presence of former Prime Minister and EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni and the Mayor of Rome and former Minister for the Economy Roberto Gualtieri, with Monica Giandotti acting as moderator. “Yesterday I saw a great deal of euphoria in the Chamber of Deputies, so I would like to make a brief point,” says Casini: “Foreign policy is not an appendage of domestic policy. It is the issue above all issues. It is therefore essential that on these issues – such as our approach to Ukraine – I systematically read what my friend Gentiloni writes in La Repubblica and agree with him from A to Z: Ukraine is not for sale, it must be defended, and any coalition seeking to govern the country cannot hesitate; it must know clearly which side of history to stand on.” Gentiloni himself does not hold back on the issues that matter either (some in the centre-left would like to see him as prime minister again. Along the lines of: “If there were an early general election, without primaries…”). These issues (Ukraine, EU defence, relations with Donald Trump and with China), says the former EU Commissioner, must be “at the heart of next year’s election campaign”: “We are at a crossroads in history. And next year, elections will be held in more or less half of European countries. And in almost all the countries of southern Europe: Italy, France, Spain, Greece. The issue of the future of the European Union, in my view, should be central.” And in De Luca’s book, says Gentiloni, “there is plenty of material for the programmes of the opposition and the future government. So let’s look at it carefully because it will be the fundamental issue.” Europe, De Luca argues in his essay, with its resilience despite the crises, “is the most ambitious political and civic project to emerge from the ruins of the Second World War, designed to guarantee peace, democracy, rights and prosperity to peoples divided for centuries by conflicts and rivalries”, and now, “faced with the challenges of our time – wars, competition between powers, the technological revolution, energy crises and attacks on international law”, it is called upon to take “a new political leap” towards greater integration. Not far away, in the Chamber of Deputies, the majority is once again divided over the electoral law, but the centre-left’s joy must not be short-sighted, is the argument, given that just a week ago, on stage at the launch event for the ‘broad coalition’ campaign in Naples, it was the centre-left that scored an own goal, with Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte ready to argue that Russia is not a threat to Europe and that, in a sense, a major Russian threat is being fabricated to persuade European countries to rearm. Piero De Luca writes and says: “A strengthened Europe is the only possibility, the only solution, an existential choice” in the international context that lies ahead. “We must be bold. If not now, when?” Trump has, unwittingly, acted as a catalyst for this realisation, says De Luca, whilst Casini reiterates: “We are obliged to acknowledge the need to shoulder our responsibilities. Even Trump’s predecessors asked us to do so, but we turned a deaf ear. Now, faced with the American president’s caricatured image of a Europe of freeloaders, we are obliged to take note of it.” Gualtieri, recalling the difficult days of the Covid crisis and his experience as Minister for the Economy, speaks of “Europe’s extraordinary capacity to react” and of the role of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) as a lever for exporting a ‘target-based’ working method to local government as well. The mayor is optimistic about the future of an EU in which, as Gentiloni puts it, people will stop “whingeing”. The aim, for now, is for the broad coalition to work towards a common pro-European programme. “If only,” sighs a Democratic Party representative, whilst out there, for one day at least, the spectacle of a united and jubilant broad coalition is still unfolding.