Because Europe will come out of the Covid crisis in a bad way. Speak Caracciolo (Limes)
Maurizio Stefanini's interview with Lucio Caracciolo, director of Limes and professor of Strategic Studies at the Luiss Guido Carli University of Rome, for the quarterly of Start Magazine
How does the EU come out of the covid 19 crisis, better or worse?
From covid 19, the European Union certainly comes out worse, in every respect. Obviously from the point of view of public health, and this is obvious. But above all from a geopolitical and cultural point of view, in the sense that this crisis has forced and pushed the various countries to deal with it in an absolutely national or subnational way.
By limiting cooperation to a minimum, closing or opening or re-closing borders on the basis of national choices, and discovering within oneself even cultural faults that were in some way hidden or sedated.
Did the bluff turn out?
Also.
The Recovery Fund, however, is hailed as the beginning of something different. The covid would have imposed on the EU the aut aut between a qualitative leap and disintegration. But is it serious?
It is an important fact, no doubt, due to the choice of Germany. Faced with an absolutely unforeseen and unpredictable crisis of enormous size, Germany reacted not by siding with the so-called frugal, that is, its more or less small satellites, but with France, Italy and Spain, in short, with Western Europe. It thus differentiated itself not only from its northern satellites, but also from those of the east:
Poland and Visegrád Group.
Why did he do it? I think it was a very difficult choice, and that it will probably have some negative rebounds in the coming months as well. In particular, we Italians and other countries benefiting from this Recovery Fund would not, according to them, be up to this investment. But the real question is: why did they invest in us? And the answer, as far as I can see, is at least twofold. First: Germany has such a need to use Europe, also understood in an ideological sense, as an element of legitimization of its national interests, that it cannot accept its further laceration after leaving the United Kingdom. Second, and more specifically referring to Italy: since Northern Italy is an integral and very valuable part of the German industrial and commercial value chain, it cannot be left to itself. Otherwise it would lead to an overall collapse of the system not only in Italy but in Europe as we know it.
(Extract of an article published in the quarterly of Start Magazine "Digital Europe – The return of the Union and the opportunity of Italy", here the full version)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-dalla-crisi-covid-leuropa-uscira-malandata-parla-caracciolo-limes/ on Fri, 01 Jan 2021 06:02:59 +0000.