The leader of Azione announces the launch of the “Il Centro” list and is already looking ahead to the post-election period.

Rome. It will be the centre-centre list and will be called, precisely, Il Centro. Carlo Calenda announced this to this newspaper (the full video interview is available from today on Foglio on air): it is a coalition that will bring together, for the 2027 general election, Azione, Pina Picierno’s Spazio Pubblico, the Einaudi Foundation and others who will join along the way (perhaps, judging by the internal split that has just emerged, there will also be a faction from the Lib Dems). And so we discuss the centre with Calenda, at a time when the echoes of the Democratic wave are reverberating from the US. The leader of Azione is relieved by Donald Trump’s initial non-confrontational statements, but remains partly pessimistic (“Trump will still have a great deal of autonomy in foreign policy,” he says, “and the Democrats won’t be able to do much about it”). 

Calenda is also concerned about Europe under hybrid attack (Azione has tabled a bill on the matter, which is now on the parliamentary agenda). However, there are also, again from the Azione camp, faint echoes of internal upheavals within the other centre-right bloc – the one which, within the broader political spectrum, is struggling to find a path towards unity. Does Calenda feel any nostalgia for the Third Pole of old? And what will be the conditions for forming an alliance with one side or the other after the election? “We do not position ourselves in the centre out of philosophical conviction – we are liberals and therefore pragmatic – but because on certain values there can be no compromise.” Which ones? “Firstly: if we do not create a federal Europe, we will become colonies of Russia, China and the US. And I could only form an alliance with a government that wishes to pursue the historic goal of creating the United States of Europe. Secondly: support for Ukraine. Thirdly: getting this country’s industry and energy sector back on its feet. But today, unfortunately, neither the left nor the right has the slightest clarity on these issues.” Perhaps they will clarify their positions. “If we prove decisive after the vote, they will have no choice but to do so.” Calenda is what you might call a fan of a hung parliament; that is precisely what he hopes for. “We are at a turning point in history where we cannot tell Italians, ‘either vote for Giorgia Meloni or vote for Elly Schlein’ – leaders of coalitions that carry within them the weight of enormous contradictions and major failures, not only with regard to European integration. I said the same about the Conte II government. Our aim is therefore to bring this era of bipolarism to an end. We risk not surviving what is to come.” The West, says Calenda, “is imploding from within, before being attacked from without. The political landscape is becoming more radicalised, or has already become so, in many countries.” This is also what the reformists on the centre-left say, such as Italia Viva. “I don’t understand how Matteo Renzi could have stood as part of the Third Pole, declared himself Silvio Berlusconi’s heir, run a campaign centred on himself, and then ended up in the ‘broad coalition’. I believe that, to put it bluntly, the only thing that matters to him is the guarantee of returning to Parliament. To be sure, it is a legitimate instinct for survival. That said, I do not even understand these other centrist groups that spring up and count for nothing, and the interesting thing is that the real ‘broad coalition’ makes no secret of it: they make decisions amongst themselves, they take photos amongst themselves.” But the centre of the ‘broad coalition’ is saying in unison: we’re here and we’re indispensable. “The real broad coalition – the PD, M5S and AVS – regards them as electoral pawns. Like the Peasants’ Party in communist Poland or the sham opposition in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.” Pawns of whom? “Of the bloc which, from the point of view of policy leadership, is dominated by Conte, the only one who actually says what he wants to do. The PD is in complete disarray and will accept Conte’s conditions: it has no alternative.” Are you still in talks with the centre of the broad coalition? “With IV, it’s pointless today, for the reasons mentioned above. I’ve approached Più Europa on several occasions. Alessandro Onorato’s civic project was created by Goffredo Bettini, modelled on the Polish farmers’ movement.” And what about Ernesto Ruffini and Franco Gabrielli’s Più Uno? “Well: a question mark. The truth is that the primaries are turning into a farce, and this is creating the conditions for Meloni to win again. Unbelievable.”