Mario Monti on Corriere della Sera threatens Italy on the Mes?
What the former prime minister, Mario Monti, wrote in Corriere della Sera about the reform and ratification of the Mes. Giuseppe Liturri's comment
If until yesterday there were some parliamentarians from the majority who supported the government of Giorgia Meloni, who had doubts about the ratification of the reform of the ESM Treaty, after reading the editorial by life senator Mario Monti in the Corriere della Sera , we believe that the doubt has turned into a clear opposition.
If the arguments are Monti's, sometimes threatening, it means that the European institutions (and their obedient Italian proxies) are really not after fruit, but after coffee.
First of all, the linguistic register adopted by the Senator is surprising. Recantation, conversion, doctrinal inconsistencies, stake. We seem to have gone back to the times of the Holy Inquisition, as if discussing the economic policy choices of a country were a theological question and not a question to be analyzed in terms of rationality, economic science and the relative evaluations of convenience. Evidently Monti is used to the rhetorical trick of outlining the discussion field, even designating the referee and deciding when to end the match and bring the ball home. Sorry, but these are tricks that don't hold up for long.
Monti argues that there is " ambiguity " on the part of Premier Meloni on the subject of ratification, to the point of jeopardizing the " credibility " acquired so far, through the abjuration of the positions held in the last decade. But the facts tell us that there is no ambiguity. The position is unique and it is the one expressed by the Parliament at the end of November which " commits the Government not to approve the bill ratifying the reform of the Treaty establishing the ESM ". Point. End of discussion. Other than ambiguity. The position is monolithic: the government does not present the ratification bill because the sovereign Parliament is against it. The rest is bar or ocean liner chatter.
But the theme of abjuration is also ill-posed and mischievous. Did Monti really believe (or hope) that Meloni would get to the government by overturning tables and slamming his fists on the table, with the ingenuity and candor of an amateur in danger? The government's credibility in Europe (and on the markets) was generated by the solid political majority that supports this government and also by the acknowledgment of not being faced with an inexperienced one, not by slapstick "abjurations and conversions".
Continuing on this surreal register, Monti believes that whoever opposes this ratification is obeying a theological totem, whose betrayal would lead to the stake. No, there are dozens of deputies and senators who have been studying the story of the reform at least since the first steps taken in 2018 and are, in full freedom of conscience, aware that the current Mes is an obsolete tool and its reform does not improve anything, on the contrary, it makes it even more dangerous.
Monti criticizes the government for not presenting the ratification bill and displays a " strange " conception of representative parliamentary democracy, of the ratification mechanisms and of article 80 of the Constitution (which reserves the laws for ratifying international treaties to the Chambers). If the European procedures and the Constitution foresee that the will of the pro tempore governments is not enough to approve a Treaty, but there is a need for a law of ratification approved by Parliament, there must be a reason and therefore the outcome is also admitted of a Parliament that does not ratify. Or is Parliament forbidden to disagree? And if this is the likely outcome, why should the government present the ratification bill? Or does Monti hope that Meloni is naive enough to score the sensational own goal of rejecting a government-initiated bill?
If the EU is a Babel of 27 countries struggling to agree on something and continually negotiating downwards, is the " functionality of the EU " suddenly at risk for once we are dissenting? It cannot fail to be clear to Monti that the fault lies not with Italy but with the structural dysfunctionality of the EU institutions.
Let's pass over the passage of the " convenience " for Italy " demonstrated " by the article by Marco Buti and Giampaolo Vitali in yesterday's Il Sole 24 Ore , where instead the paucity of arguments increases the perplexities on ratification.
Finally we come to the Trojan horse proposed by Monti to Meloni. To overcome the " concern " that the ratification of the Treaty will be followed by the " temptation " to resort to it – here too the two passages are maliciously connected – the Senator proposes that the government undertake with Parliament, together with the ratification, not to use the Mes, " unless specifically authorized by parliament ".
A solution that leaks everywhere. Starting from the word " temptation ", almost as if the Mes were the apple of the earthly paradise. Furthermore, Monti overlooks the fact that the Mes is already fully operational today and the reform does not upset it. Therefore, it is not clear why the (non-existent) concern to use it – which Monti wants to avoid as a counterpart to ratification – suddenly arises in the future.
If the Mes, the reformed one awaiting ratification or the current one, always arrives uninvited and feasts alone on the remains of the country, then what is the use of the " prudent formula " that does not protect against anything, proposed by Monti? To ratify the Mes and that's it.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/mes-mario-monti/ on Fri, 26 May 2023 06:07:46 +0000.