The current context is gloomy: the tragic anniversary of the Twin Towers attack, its horrendous celebration with the flight from Kabul, the refounding of the Caliphate of Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan, the Planet devastated by the out-of-control pandemic plague, the relentless action of islamic terror and irresponsible demagoguery of the political scum that promotes no-vax dementia. Thousands of dead drowned in the Sicily Canal in the desperate attempt to escape from hunger and African wars… Petty populism and nationalist sovereign involution, anti-historical “no cancel” stupidity, attracts the dominant superficiality. Italy risks falling into the hands of a reactionary, racist, arrogant and violent right, because of the quarrelsome void of a left without vision and initiative, and of a sterile and absent “center”.

Seventy years after the first embryo of the European Union (the ECSC – European Coal and Steel Community, 1951), 64 years after the Treaty of Rome (European Economic Community) and 29 years after the Treaty of Maastricht (institution of the Single European Currency), the dream and project of a United Europe seems, in the current depressing conjuncture, heading for the graveyard of history. Two generations of European citizens, born, raised and educated in that dream and project, are actually wondering what has gone wrong. 

Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Roman Emperor, the ideal founder of a United Europe and patron of the European Thought, is turning in his heavy red rock tomb in the Palermo Cathedral.

The mandate and continuity of the European Thought:

The future is the outcome of the collective will as it is shaped by the complex interplay of individual wills and their ability to spread and convince and, as always happens, action wins against inaction.

Europe has a history of wars, empires, kingdoms, revolutions, divisions, fires, gallows, purges, massacres, social conflicts, fascism, nazism and communism that we have suffered, and endured. A story that has left us a solid lay, skeptical, democratic and progressive culture, a victorious, original and unique humanistic and scientific competence on the planet: the European Thought. A legacy paid for by millions of dead.

For this mandate, populism, sovreignism, nationalism and the line of obscene demagogy that supports these conducts are intolerable civil blasphemy.

It is time to resume the journey, the action and the challenge to build the Institutes of the European Thought:  the legacy of twenty centuries of History.

Below I list five priorities to be addressed: basic conditions of future equity, security, stability and success, an inescapable debt we owe to the 447 million inhabitants of the 27 countries of the European Union.

1. The single currency requires a Central Bank with the powers of a Central Bank (evaluate, devalue, buy on the financial markets, sell on the financial markets with an active defense strategy of the single currency (‘whatever it takes’ strategy). It would become one of the strong currencies in the global trading system, attracting investments and promoting business. The obvious consequences would be employment, industrial qualification, avant-garde research, negotiating power in the solution of the current major global problems: environment, climate, migration.
   
2. The single currency requires a unified European taxation system with the monetary mechanisms to solve the different public debts and other specific regional diverse conditions. Money represents the overall “value” of a country’s economy; a single currency in a territory of 27 member countries with physical, environmental, geographical, territorial, infrastructure, human capital differences must be assisted by dynamics of compensation, re-investment and financial rebalancing to avoid systematic, negative privileges. The current situation of the Euro does not foresee any of this complex catalog of tools, which is the fundamental cause of current weaknesses and possible future crises. This is a situation that requires immediate political attention.
   
3. Points 1 and 2 require harmonization of salaries to take into account the different environmental conditions and different social services (health, education, social security, transport, energy, etc.), a problem that must be addressed and not left to the aggression of the labor markets (see point 2)
   
4. Immigration from Africa and the third and fourth worlds requires a strategy covering the next hundred years; structural investments in the countries of origin; a coordinated policy towards the countries of origin; consistently equipped with implementation, financial, assistance tools technical, legal control, military. Fundamental assumption: Europe is today the complex, fantastic result of 20 centuries of immigration and its future depends on future centuries of immigration. Indiscriminate blocking is suicidal. Punishing and repressing is criminal.
   
5. A united political Europe requires coordinated social policies (welfare, research, education, information, health etc.) A complex and long-term strategy must be set out to build the “sense of living in Europe from 2020 to 2300” , the cultural legacy of the European Thought.

The dream is there, we need the Government.

Lorenzo Matteoli