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First of all, the infringement procedure, all the Italian newspapers talk about, is not an infringement procedure (sorry, as EU law prof I cannot but suffer for all these wrong terms, words are important).

Second, there is no conspiracy against Italy or its recovered sovereignty, just the (usual?) consequence of an infringement of a rule, which, by the way, is quite common sense:  excessive deficits are prohibited as they threaten the whole Euro area, its very existence under its current institutional structure.

But let me clarify the first point first.

The infringement procedure is a legal procedure started by the European Commission against an EU country that fails to implement EU law. The Commission – after a pre-judicial exchange of communications – may refer the issue to the Court of Justice, which in certain cases, can condemn the state and even impose financial penalties.

Otherwise, in this case, we are witnessing the first step of the procedure for the application of the prohibition of an excessive deficit, set up by article 126 TFEU and further specified by a number of legal acts, which is radically different.

First of all, it is not a judicial procedure, but a political one. The main decisional body is the ECOFIN Council (the Council of Financial Ministers of the Union), not the Court of Justice. Second, it is grounded in economic reasoning, and the only possible line of defence is on the same ground.

But let’s take a step back

The States of the Union have “almost” full sovereignty over budgetary matters, they are absolutely free to decide how to compose the basket of income and expenditure.

The only limit is the prohibition of an excessive deficit.

The rationale is simple: the default of one state would spread among the others like a contagion. Moreover, the EU budget is too small to save anyone. And taking money from one state’s budget to rescue another is difficult and unpopular (we have witnessed all this during the Greek crisis).

So the EU Treaties try to prevent all this through two basic rules: one is article 125 TFEU stating that every state is responsible for its own budget and no government (not even the European one) is obliged to take over the responsibility stemming from a state’s budget. The second is article 126, intended -with its prohibition – to prevent unsustainable deficits.

The ECOFIN Council is in charge of assessing, on a proposal from the Commission, whether the deficit is excessive. In this case, with a predefined step by step procedure, it may adopt a recommendation, then an intimation, and finally a sanction (but it takes almost a year to get to this final stage). The spirit is to promote correction: the procedure can be stopped at any moment presenting a correction plan. It has happened many times for other EU countries, it happened in 2003 for France and Germany.

These rules, in the treaties since 1992, have been signed and ratified by Italy, even willingly.

Among the fathers of the euro, some eminent Italians as Guido Carli, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Tommaso Padoa Schioppa were well aware of the damage that was being inflicted on future generations with a debt out of control. They thought that an external bond could save Italy and acted accordingly.

In general terms, excessive debts are not a good thing for States: they generate interests and reduce oxygen for expansive policies, they compress the discretion of States on current policies and they transfer a burden over the future generations. In a currency union, they are even more unsustainable as we cannot print money to cover them.

But, let’s think for a moment that we could, would it be the solution? Are you aware of the price of inflation over the economy and over the population? Just on everybody? In a short span of time, we would all be poorer as the purchasing power drops and savings lose their value.

Or are you thinking that we have the choice of not honouring the debt?

Unfortunately, it’s not a debt with some foreign power or financial institution. It is a diffused debt, which we find in most of the mutual funds, in the retirement funds, in the portfolios of all Italian banks. Not repaying it would be just a different way to spread poverty.

Now, I personally do not like either the stability pact or the austerity approach. I think there are times when expansive policies have to be made (and the Commission has tried to do so with an investment plan that has greatly benefited our country, but we do not talk about it). Of course, it is too little, and the EU budget is also too little if we think (as I think) that it is useful having some kind of corrective and balancing function of a central budget in a currency union. But this is another point.

We can promote new rules at European level, we can negotiate the new EU budget multiannual framework having in mind our needs and the needs of the disadvantaged areas (not just our ones), we can suggest new funding for unemployed people, wherever they are (you know Italy studied this proposal some years ago?).

This nonetheless would not stop the procedure. We can stop it, anytime, implementing sounder public finances, whatever the political vision we want them to mirror.

By the way, we are already paying the sanction. It is the so-called sanction of the markets: call it spread, call it interest, call it difficult allocation of the new debt emissions. It is, in broader terms, the price of loss of credibility.

I don’t think my country deserve this, but I can only blame its current political choices and not some financial monster in the shadows.

The first Supranational Democracy Dialogue has ended one week ago and I am just recovering from the stress and the fatigue of managing and hosting it, and from the overdose of joy and enthusiasm of welcoming so many friends and fellow visionaries, of sharing ideas and plans for the future. We even signed a beautiful final manifesto, you can download it here: Manifesto for supranational democracy final.

It was a great experience and the most exciting in my career path.  Nonetheless, I am not sure it was really about my career path. As Myra Jackson pointed out in one of our breakfasts together, it was more about coming out of my “academic closet”.

Several of my young, great team members published posts on the event pointing out how I was the visionary behind all this. And that’s flattering!

Except that, in Italian, if you write visionary (visionario), then you add “in a good way”, as they all did. Because in Italian “visionario” means plain foolish (pazzo visionario!).

It’s a pity. As I learned in other political and cultural climates, being visionaries is a good thing: it’s about having a vision for the future and sharing it. It’s the quality of true leadership. I wonder if this reticence of our language in using the word “visionario” is just a reflection of our collective pessimism and of having given up visions for the future.

It took me years to accept the idea of being visionary and it is just the first time that I am publicly defined so.

Before accepting my being visionary I went through a number of life-changing experiences: starting the Group of Lecce with some fellow visionary colleagues, being invited to join the Bretton Woods Committee, walking a spiritual journey and meeting many extraordinary mentors, attending three A-fests in a row and the first Mindvalley U (and this year, again!), stretching my finances – in a way I would have never imagined – and standing mostly out of my comfort zone. I was already forty – and a single mom – when it all started – several years ago. It happened gradually, it was sort of re-prioritizing my entire life, step by step. And setting myself free.

Do you realize how much of our freedom of expression is limited by self-censorship?

Now, I cannot say I have arrived somewhere. Maybe I have just stopped in some big station, and waiting for the train to move forward, to the next one. It’s all about who you become along the way:  yourself, or Your-True-Self.

In my case, it is about becoming visionary (or plain foolish :-)))

By the way, I love this quote, it is from a conversation between Alice and her father:

I am glad to inform you that the debate over supranational democracy is going to get real, or, I should say, to find its place in the real world.

The University of Salento will host it, as a two-day event – the Supranational Democracy Dialogue – aimed at bringing together scholars of any background, NGO leaders, political activists, businessmen and all sort of innovative thinkers to discuss the big challenges that humanity is currently facing.

It is planned as a conference, but it could become a festival along the way: with debates, side events and network gatherings all scattered around in the baroque centre of our beautiful town.

Susanna

PS We also welcome support and sponsors, any little amount will be much appreciated:

We live in the age of fear.

If we turn on the television we hear awful news about terrorism, heinous crimes and terrible catastrophes.

If we turn on on any political discourse we hear the same awful news plus – often – a clear message of warning, which is translated into racism, xenophobia, violence. Closing doors and rising walls.

No words of hope, openess, oneness.

I don’t think that everybody in this world is affected by this contagion of fear, but the polarization is evident and fear wins, at least on the media.

This is easy to explain: every message which has an impact on sales wins on the media. And fear sales very well. People get anxious, want to hear more and know more, watch more TV and buy more news magazines, have more details… in the hope to get reassured. Unfortunately, what they get is just more fear.and fear gets addicting.

The same holds true for politics: those who sell fear earn votes in exchange of a fallacious promise of security.

How can national politicians only think to stop terrorism or migration waves closing the doors to what happens outside?

The solution resides outside just as the problem: it may only be a collective one, one which comes from a political discourse grounded on the interdependence of countries as well as on the interconnectedness of human beings.

What really strikes me is the fact that, according to many databases, the war deaths have been declining since 1946 and, as reported by Our World in Data “although wars are still fought, the world is now more peaceful than ever”.

From the perspective of the Human Security Report  “since 1900 far more people have been killed by their own governments than by foreign armies”.

True that the number of victims of terrorism has increased and, being this a random threat we feel more insecure, but the aggregated data show that over 78 per cent, occurred in just five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria and half of the terrorist deaths are attributed to Boko Haram and ISIS. (source Global Terrorism Index) As sad as it is, it appears to me as a new kind of war, which affects these five unfortunate countries.

So, why the impact on political discourse and the polarization of politics has been so impressive in the US, Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland where the first cause of death are, still, diseases of the circulatory system and cancer?

Just a matter of selling fear in exchange of votes?

Nonetheless, we need to stay positive and spread our message of peace, and awareness. If you need a boost of hope, I invite you to read this previous post.