Will Italy Leave the E.U.? Not So Fast

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/27/opinion/italy-leave-european-union.html

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MILAN — Eight weeks after Italy’s election, it’s still possible that a government will be formed by the Five Star Movement and the League, two parties that have campaigned passionately against Brussels and the European Union in the past. In the last few days they have quarreled, but it seems sure that one of them, maybe both, will be the force driving Italy’s next government, with the question before it being whether to continue on that anti-European path.

Speaking in the European Parliament in February, the League’s leader, Matteo Salvini, likened the European Union to “the Titanic about to sink.” The views of Five Star are less clear cut. Its leaders have changed their minds several times about the euro, and at the moment, it seems that they’d like to stay in the union. But they might well change their minds again. After all, Beppe Grillo, the movement’s founder and ultimate authority, once shouted, “Italy should leave the euro as soon as possible!” Others are on the record as saying that “the euro has destroyed us” and that “it will eventually make southern Italy a wasteland.”

On March 4, Election Day, Five Star attracted 32 percent of the vote. The League got 17 percent, and a third, even more Euroskeptic party — the right-wing Brothers of Italy — polled 4 percent. That means that more than half of Italian voters turned against Europe.

Does it follow that the European Union is now at risk? Well, not yet. Do not expect Italy to drop the euro or leave the union anytime soon. The price would be way too high. Nevertheless, it’s a fact: The continent’s most Europhile country has lost faith in Europe’s ability to solve Italy’s problems.

A Euroskeptic Italy is almost an oxymoron. Italy is one of the six founding nations of the European Union, having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 with France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. For 60 years it has been a loyal member and has regularly led the polls that measure trust and good will toward the bloc.

What’s changed?

Three things, mainly. One relates to European policies. Another involves Italian politicians. The third, a consequence of the first two that looks as if it would be the most difficult to fix, concerns Italian voters.

No. 1: The European Union has disappointed Italy on immigration, a deeply sensitive issue. The Dublin Regulation, in force since 1997, states that the country where an asylum-seeker first enters the union is responsible for registering his or her asylum application. With the current decade’s flood of migrants coming mostly from the Middle East and Africa, the two most exposed countries have been Greece and Italy. A look at a map is enough to tell you why.

Making things worse for Italy, a costly agreement with Turkey to act as a sort of bouncer for Europe has almost totally shut down the eastern route through Greece. But in Libya, which lies just south of Sicily, there has been no government to deal with, so migrants from Africa kept coming. When Italy asked its European partners to share the burden, they first said no, then maybe, then yes to opening their borders to some migrants. But only a few hundred were accepted, and Italy felt betrayed.

European insensitivity has shown up elsewhere. In a supposedly “common” market, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Cyprus and Britain all offer tax havens to encourage international companies to set up their headquarters within them. Mr. Salvini, speaking in the European Parliament in February, described the European Commission’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, as “the head of government of a tax haven for 20 years.” And a few weeks before the election, Embraco, a company in the Whirlpool group, announced that it would close its compressor plants near Turin, fire 500 people and move to Slovakia, where wages and employee benefits are much lower. Very bad timing for Europhiles.

No. 2: Every country in the union has at least one political party that built its fortunes on bashing Europe. But in Italy, lately, this attitude has been adopted by even the historically pro-European parties, which couldn’t resist blaming Brussels for their own failures. Matteo Renzi, first as a prime minister (2014 to 2016) and then as the leader of the center-left Democratic Party (2017), could hardly open his mouth without saying something unpleasant about the union. Did he think he could outsmart his opponents that way? Well, he failed. “Blame it on Brussels!” didn’t pay off for him or his government. It compares with what happened in Britain before the Brexit referendum. David Cameron, while leading the campaign to remain in the bloc, chose to acknowledge the union’s shortcomings; he did it so well that he persuaded his fellow citizens to leave it.

No. 3: Italy, where feelings run high on these issues, senses an emotional disconnection between Europe and its citizens. For almost 60 years, Italian voters had seen the European Union as a dull but reliable babysitter who would ultimately take care of those rowdy Italian politicians. A former prime minister told me, “If not for Brussels, I could never resist pressure to expand public spending.” All that is gone now. And a majority of Italians think the sitter is at least partly to blame.

But what about the union’s very substantial achievements? It’s created common standards in areas from home safety to cellphone roaming; it’s allowed people to trade, work and live where they please; it protects agriculture and fishing; it’s helped millions of students spend time abroad. And it’s enabled 28 countries to speak with one voice and be respected — as Microsoft, Google and Facebook know well.

All forgotten? No. But most Italians, yearning for the supposed security of a lost age, find Brussels too distant. National, local and ethnic identities are more familiar, thus more reassuring.

That remoteness is important. The European Union looks soulless. Its greatest flaw may be that it cannot communicate its achievements. Take Europe Day. Only a small fraction of the 510 million citizens of the union even know about the day, let alone celebrate it, and almost no one has any idea why it’s May 9. In fact, it was on May 9, 1950, that Robert Schuman, then France’s foreign minister, officially proposed placing French and German coal and steel production under one authority; can you see why those 510 million don’t deck the halls?

So here’s an idea: Let’s declare May 9 “No Europe Day” and suspend all of the union’s achievements for 24 hours. Border crossings will be reintroduced and trade barriers re-erected. People will exchange their currency for every trip, and soccer teams will field only players from their own countries.

Oh, and war will be once again a very real threat. Not far away. Right at home.

One day would be enough to remind its citizens what Europe is about. And in Italy, if they do form a government, Five Star and the League might understand the importance of our common European home.

Sure, it’s not perfect. So let’s not demolish it. Let’s fix it.