One Europe Indivisible?
SENIGALLIA, SILVIO F.
THE VIEW FROM ROME One Europe Indivisible? By Silvio F. Senigallia Rome Editorials and analytical articles in newspapers and magazines here are increasingly focusing on 1992, the year the...
...As a result, the two Italian commissioners received the comparatively minor portfolios of ecology and research and development (which does not include the solidly German controlled industrial affairs department...
...Hence the sizable number of EC directives Italy has yet to implement because of the open reluctance of large portions of the business community to circumscribe the range of their activities...
...No divisive statements emanate from Rome...
...The unwieldy public sector, the labor unions' suspicions, the nature of De Mita's coalition government, a quarrelsome Christian Democratic-Socialist diarchy—all these are factors that make radical changes slow and painful...
...Indeed, the forced removal of Italy's unusually tough trade quota system may result in the massive unloading here of Japanese and Korean goods, to cite the most obvious threats...
...Italy's situation is different...
...Not surprisingly, the reaction of industrialists and merchants to the prospect of a politically and economically unified Europe reflects their personal interests...
...Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita has repeatedly stated that his government is committed to a politically active unified Europe...
...Whenever they feel like discussing foreign affairs they pick a meaty issue—like the Palestinian question, Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's perestroïka, or Libyan Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi's potentially dangerous brainstorms—rather than a noble but nebulous ideal...
...Four years from now the goal may still be a mirage, pursued with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the countries concerned...
...In the case of the nation's rulers, it is no secret that, while they recurrently pay lip service to the EC's ultimate objective, they tend to drag their feet when it comes to taking steps heading in that direction...
...Italy, too, could prove a stumbling block...
...This declaration of intention has not, however, prompted his Cabinet to more energetic action aimed at implementing EC directives that may be in conflict with Italy's perceived interests...
...The main problem here is the public sector, with its decrepit administration, bad transportation, poor telecommunications, schools, and research institutes...
...It similarly lamented Italy's failure to secure one of the important portfolios that went to representatives of the Netherlands (Frans Andiressen: external relations), Ireland (Ray MacSharry: agriculture), Denmark (Henning Christophersen: economic affairs), and Spain (Abel Matutes: Third World relations...
...They also favor a solid European bloc able to stand up to American economic and industrial supremacy—especially when they are in the throes of one of their anti-American moods and sound like rabid continental nationalists...
...On the political level, they do not seem to oppose the possible loss of a portion of national sovereignty...
...Neither Eurodreamers, as many West Germans are mostly because of their geographic location, nor Eurorejectionists, as many British give the impression of being, the Italians are blandly favorable to the EC as long as they see it as a useful vehicle for subsidies and advantageous trade conditions...
...So at the moment the betting is against Italy being ready for European unity by the end of 1992...
...Concern about the negative repercussions of unification on the domestic front, moreover, is far from unjustified, as a look at some specific areas quickly reveals...
...That "but" has mainly to do with timing...
...With regard to the free movement of goods, a single European market will make life harder at home for many Italian companies...
...In addition, the birth of a single European economic entity in 1992 will perforce entail the freer movement of labor...
...It is not worried about national sovereignty, nor has it raised objections on matters of principle...
...Italy's ablest politicians are never sent to represent the country in the European Commission: Senior ministers would be unwilling to risk leaving the spotlight of national politics for the periphery of the international scene...
...As the Economist accurately pointed out two months ago, the public sector is controlled by political patronage and Italian patronage is a stronger, more durable institution than anything ever dreamed of by Jacques Delors, the leading promoter of the 1992 project...
...On the economic level, the feeling is quite unsettled...
...If La Repubblica overdramatized Italy's loss of face at Brussels, it must be given credit for refusing to suggest an anti-Italian plot and instead placing the blame squarely on the government's lukewarm attitude toward Community affairs...
...As the daily wrote, at present as in the past, Italian leaders are devoting far more attention to the endless series of byzantine intrigues that characterize this nation's political life than to EC developments...
...Thatcher have their roots in a centuries-old insular tradition and consequent aversion to commitments with "those foreigners" across the Channel...
...Italy, traditionally one of the easiest places in Europe to enter, reportedly has already been requested by its partners to tighten its immigration procedures in order to reduce the danger of freely roaming terrorists...
...The objections to European integration openly voiced by Mrs...
...But four years is a long time...
...This, it is rightly feared in Rome's treasury circles, could bring about heavy speculation against the lira...
...Although the mythical rendezvous of the EC's 12 members (the six founders—France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, andLuxembourg —plus Great Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece) has been set for the end of the next quadrennium, it remains to be seen whether the unified continental market will become a reality...
...And when the choice was finally made, it was conditioned by strictly partisan considerations, so that the politicians selected after a bitter wrangle were not among the best and the brightest...
...The Rome government does not relish the prospect of being forced to amend drastically a law passed two years ago extending, among other liberal provisions, a form of amnesty to illegal aliens who turn themselves in...
...Last year, for instance, the Rome government was once again late in appointing its representatives to the European Commission...
...The setback suffered by the country may not be as severe and humiliating as the Rome daily La Repubblica claimed in a frontpage editorial, yet a setback it is...
...The International Herald Tribune, warning that the next four years will be arduous, was favorably impressed by the competence and stature of most of the individual commissioners, and by their intention to serve not their respective countries' interests but those of an integrated Europe...
...Several of its members are young, eager and determined to perform successfully at Brussels...
...The Paris-based daily, though, neglected to examine an all-important element: the willingness and ability of the EC governments to foster the Commission's aims in a spirit of concord and compromise...
...Otherwise European integration stirs only a moderate amount of enthusiasm among Italians...
...The attitude is simply one of "Yes, but...
...The Italian press expressed keen disappointment about Italy's exclusion from the three-cornered French-German-British directory that will de facto run the new Commission formed on December 16...
...Thus the current commissioners are Filippo Mario Pandolfi, a no-longer-influential former Cabinet member, and Carlo Ripa de Meana, an attractive Socialist intellectual, who is a political lightweight...
...The new European Commission, headed by incumbent President and former French Finance Minister Jacques Delors, is a definite improvement over the previous ones...
...If one recalls Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's speech last September at Bruges, particularly her stressing such provocative issues as the relationship between national sovereignty and project 1992, it is hard to share the early confidence that unification will be achieved on schedule...
...On the Left of the political screen such a measure would be opposed and labeled racist, even though the present level of unemployment in the country is in excess of 12 per cent...
...Silvio F. Senigallia reports regularly for The New Leader on Italian affairs...
...Anyone managing to get into one country would be able to travel uninhibited through the other 11 EC countries...
...If and when controls on the movement of capital within the Community are lifted, hugesums of lire now captive in the Italian banking system will be free to move elsewhere...
...By Silvio F. Senigallia Rome Editorials and analytical articles in newspapers and magazines here are increasingly focusing on 1992, the year the European Community (EC) is supposed to forge itself into an integrated political and economic bloc...
...Despite Italy's seminal role as a cofounder of the Community, for example, it has so far been a rather tepid supporter of the integration project...
Vol. 72 • January 1989 • No. 2
