Bonino’s lost battles over the EU: worth celebrating

The legacy of a figure such as Emma Bonino is not made up solely of the battles she won: it is also, and perhaps above all, made up of those she lost. The ‘Emma for President’ campaign was a major political innovation, which remained unfulfilled but was not without its achievements. First and foremost, one must understand the context. It was 1999: the collapse of the First Republic was still fresh in people’s minds and the two-party system was taking hold. The rise of the Lega in the first half of the decade had made taxation a central issue in election campaigns. The referendum on the first-past-the-post system and the adoption of the Mattarellum had paved the way. Silvio Berlusconi effectively imposed the nomination of the prime ministerial candidate. In January of that year, the European Commission led by Jacques Santer – of which Bonino was a member – had resigned en masse. During her time in Brussels, Bonino had strongly politicised her role, gaining considerable visibility and esteem. No longer tied to any official post, she publicly declared her candidacy for the Quirinale: Oscar Luigi Scalfaro’s term of office was, in fact, due to expire on 13 May.

It was a brilliant and fortunate insight on the part of Giovanni Negri that made Emma ‘the right man’ for the Colle. For the first time, public opinion rallied in the run-up to the election of the Head of State. The political establishment looked the other way, electing Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, but the campaign also had another objective: to draw attention to her political platform. Indeed, in the subsequent European elections on 13 June, the Bonino List achieved a record-breaking 8.5 per cent. Why is it important to remember that episode? Because the issues raised by Bonino could not be more relevant today: on the one hand, the effort to give voters ever greater power in choosing the leaders of our institutions. An Italian at the time could never have imagined that a regression towards proportional representation and party politics would follow so soon. Yet the essence of Bonino’s campaign is even more important: her pro-European stance was based on the idea that only by making the EU an instrument of freedom could it become politically attractive. Emma may be leaving us a country that is less free than she would have wished, but freer than it would have been had she not passed through here, with her characteristic wit that only she could muster.