Jean Cocteau, the
avant garde French
poet, playwright and film-maker, once
defined his compatriots as "Italians in a
bad mood" — a contentious little epigram
that suggests, among other things,
that Italians are usually in a good mood.
That no longer seems to be entirely true
— at least with regard to the country's
pro-European, Atlanticist elite. At a recent
conference in Venice organized by the
Council for the United States and Italy, a
large number of the Italian participants
said they were deeply depressed by the
current state of the European Union,
Italy's role in it, and the disruptions that
have occurred in U.S.-European relations.
Many of those complaining were
usually cheerful senior Italian politicians
and diplomats who have played active
roles in Italian foreign policy and the
construction of a more united Europe
over many years. They were too polite to
put a damper on the proceedings by
venting their gloomy feelings in the conference.
But, privately they gave remarkably
similar accounts of their three main
grievances.
The first is that Italian influence in
the European Union has declined
sharply in recent years, and particularly
during and following the six-month Italian
EU Presidency in the latter half of
2003. The second is that the new Europe
that is emerging from the European
Union's recent enlargement and the
elaboration of a European constitution is
not the close political union that Italy
has always wanted. The third is that the
recent clashes between the United States
and some of its European allies (notably
France and Germany), and the ensuing
discord inside the European Union, have
chilled the warm Transatlantic relations
to which Italy has been dedicated for the
past half century.
The three themes are closely interwoven.
One conference participant said
that Italy had always conducted its foreign
policy like a skier, with one ski
being its commitment to European integration,
the other its attachment to the
United States. When the two skis start
heading in different directions, Italy
finds itself in an impossible position. A
leading parliamentary representative of
Italy's governing coalition, who did not
attend the conference, but visited Washington recently, complained bitterly
that
Italy was "isolated" in Europe and that
"the major European countries do not
consult us any more," because Italy had
sided with Washington over the war in
Iraq. "What is there in it for us in Italy,
being members of the coalition in Iraq?"
he lamented
Italy's relative lack of influence in
the European Union has been highlighted
in recent months by its exclusion
from an emerging triumvirate of European
leaders seeking to guide EU policies,
especially in defense and foreign
affairs.Many Italians, who consider their
country one of the European Union's Big
Four, deeply resent the way in which
French President Jacques Chirac, German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair have
agreed on their own tripartite initiatives.
Italy, however, has not been left out
of this group because of its support for
Washington over Iraq, as the Parliamentarian
claimed. Mr. Blair, after all, has
been President George W. Bush's closest
ally in the war and is also criticized at
home for not gaining any significant
quid pro quo from Washington. Britain's
close relations with America may mean
that it will never win acceptance as a full
partner in the triumvirate, at least by
France. As a non-member of the euro,
Britain cannot be at the heart of European
economic and financial policies.
But both Paris and Berlin believe that
common EU foreign and defense policies
cannot realistically be formulated
without Britain, which retains much
greater worldwide military and diplomatic
clout than Italy. Another reason
for Italy's absence is that his three colleagues
do not regard Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi as respectable or
statesmanlike enough to be admitted
into the inner sanctum.
Indeed, a number of Italians in
Venice blamed Mr. Berlusconi's mishandling
of Italy's EU Presidency as contributing
to Italy's loss of influence. Mr.
Berlusconi began his Presidency by publicly
insulting a German member of the
European Parliament, whom he said
would have made a good guard at a concentration
camp. He ended it by chairing
a badly prepared summit meeting in
Brussels that failed to agree on the new
European constitution. In between, he
came up with off-the-wall policy proposals,
such as admitting Russia and Israel
into the European Union, on which
he had not consulted his colleagues.
Although the Venice meeting was off
the record, Cesare Merlini, the Executive
Vice Chairman of the Council for the
United States and Italy, earlier stated
publicly in Washington that "in the last
few years Italy has lost the role as a
motor of European integration that it
used to have." Unlike many Italians, Mr.
Merlini said he did not mind
ad hoc cooperation
between Britain, France and
Germany if it helped to speed up EU decision-
making, provided the grouping
did not coalesce into a permanent directorate.
He regretted, however, that Italy
had helped to undercut an alternative
proposal under consideration last year,
which was to form an EU inner core
composed of the six original members
(Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg
and the Netherlands). Italians
will not mind so much if management of
the 25-nation European Union requires
the formation of a variety of different
steering groups, in some of which Italy
would participate, but they will be profoundly
vexed if their country is reduced
to second-class status in the process.
Such problems would not arise,
many Italians believe, if the European
Union became a full political union in
which individual nation states wielded
less power and the central institutions
more — an aim that Italy has long supported.
As a relatively new nation in European
terms, with a history of weak
government in Rome, Italy has always
had fewer objections to pooling sovereignty
in the central EU institutions than
older nations like France and Britain.
Many Italian policy makers hoped
that the European Union would seize the
opportunity of its recent enlargement and
last year's constitutional convention to
make a great leap forward toward greater
political unity — hopes that have clearly
been frustrated. They now have difficulty
seeing how to anchor Italy's role in an
amorphous 25-nation European Union,
with weak central institutions, that is at
odds over its future relations with the
United States. Earlier illusory hopes of
forming an alternative triumvirate composed
of Britain, Italy and Spain have collapsed
following the election defeat of
Jose-Maria Aznar, the former conservative,
pro-American Prime Minister of
Spain, and the apparent defection of Mr.
Blair to the Franco-German camp, despite
continuing Anglo-French policy and
personality clashes.
In truth it must be said that one of
the main premises underlying Italian
discontent, that Italy until recently exercised
a big influence on EU integration,
is somewhat exaggerated. Although Italy
played a key role as a founder member in
the 1950s, it has since consistently
wielded less political power than the size
of its economy and its population would
justify. This is largely a failure of Italian
governance — it is not the fault of the
other member countries, still less that of
the United States, as the Italian parliamentarian
who visited Washington in
June seemed to think. In a desperate
search for a scapegoat, the parliamentarian
even blamed the Bush administration
for the failure of Italy's EU
presidency — as if greater U.S. success in
Iraq would somehow have transformed
Mr. Berlusconi into a more skillful leader
of the European Union.
All that said, it would be wrong to
conclude that the canvas painted in
Venice was one of unremitting darkness
and despair. There was wide agreement
among Americans and Italians that Europe
and the United States will need
each other more than ever to confront
the dangers of the 21st century, and that a
start is being made in trying to put
Transatlantic relations on a sounder
footing. A sign of brightness on the horizon
was detected in the increasing realization
by U.S. policy-makers, if not by
all members of the administration, that
Washington will badly need its European
allies to prosecute the war on terrorism.
But the main onus will fall on Europe.
The European Union cannot act
coherently on the world stage if it cannot
agree on one of the most fundamental
elements of a global strategy, its relationship
with the United States. At least
some Americans also understand that a
cohesive Europe is a prerequisite for a
strong Atlantic partnership. Europeans,
however, cannot simply mark time hoping
for a change of leadership in the
United States in November, which may
well not happen, and would not solve
Europe's problems if it did. The Europeans
must solve their own problems.
And the Italians, with their strong roots
in both the European Union and the Atlantic
Alliance, can still make a big contribution
if they want to.
Reginald Dale is Editor-in-Chief of European
Affairs
.
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