by Luciano Barra Caracciolo – 03/01/2019

Source: The Truth
Luciano Barra Caracciolo, jurist, magistrate, president of the section of the Council of State, he is undersecretary for European Affairs, and works side by side with the minister Paolo Savona. Among his essays, Euros and (o?) constitutional democracy and The Constitution in the swamp.
Constitution and EU rules. Because Italy has agreed to bend beyond all reasonableness?
“It is a cultural problem that is difficult to solve. In terms of technical-legal filter, the Constitutional Court, at the beginning of the seventies, considered that a negative impact of European rules on political and social relations was unlikely, separating them mechanically from economic relations (that is, starting to retain the technical autonomy of the economic sphere from the political sphere). It was not perceived how significant the transformation that would be induced in Italian society could be, also impacting employment, labor protection, salary…”.

Underestimation error.
“Perhaps. And since then that approach has never been seen again. It has been taken for granted that the European treaties, even if they gradually expanded their impact on the governance of national societies, were compatible with the article 11 of the Constitution. On the contrary, on the one hand we were convinced that there would be no modification of the very fundamental principles of our Constitution, and on the other that the counterlimits would be triggered, that is, a ban on external interventions that may have compromised the principles that cannot be modified even with the constitutional revision process. But then they were never actually applied to European rules; at least so far…”.
What inferiority complex has led a ruling class to always say yes?
“Among the many testimonies, Guido Carli's memoirs must be reread, central figure in coining the external constraint formula. His reasoning was, roughly: and, I realize that the external constraint takes power away from the democratic institutions defined in the Constitution, but we cannot leave Italian society prey to its instincts…”.
Really…
“And, the belief rooted in our ruling classes was: Italians are unable to understand what is right for them”.
The national interest has regularly been forgotten.
“This is not entirely true. If one goes to see the work of the Constituent Assembly, there is a centrality of the national interest, a strong awareness of patriotism. And for a certain period this occurred: from reconstruction to the economic boom”.
Later, however, the race began to be the first to approve that certain rule because “Europe is asking us to do so”…
“This zeal also comes from the fact that, in the fifties and sixties, Italian success had called into question certain hierarchies. An unacceptable trauma for some. Here then is the need for the so-called “European discipline”. After all,if we consider Carli's vision that we mentioned, everything else becomes a natural consequence. We arrive at the conclusion of Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, who more or less argued that Italians needed to be put back in touch with the harshness of life, as if they didn't know her well…”.
A self-defeating prejudice.
“Let's say it all: a self-racist conception that influenced anyone who wanted to govern. How to say: the Italians got away with it, they got too much… Now we have to readjust things”.
Today citizens ask “less Europe”. A path is imaginable that makes respect for national diversity prevail over unnatural homogeneity?
“Difficult to make predictions. I make a retrospective note. The idea of ​​national differences to be overcome has never been shared – for them, Obviously – by the Germans, which they have always defended, with systematic rulings from their Constitutional Court, the incompressibility of the provisions of their Charter. Their reasoning was: our constitutional principles cannot be re-discussed by a mere association of sovereign states (l’Ue), otherwise we would need a new constituent process here in Germany. So, a Europe conceived as a place where national interests come together, but they don't get confused. The Germans played on this: establishing relationships of power to favor their economic model. And to some extent this was allowed, for reasons of political balance, even to the French”.
It would be imaginable for us what in the UK, before Brexit, it was called the "sovereignty bill", a mechanism to allow Parliament to send back what comes from Brussels?
“Theoretically this should already be implied twice. A first time, for the posts of the article 11 of the Constitution, which allows mere limitations of sovereignty but “on equal terms with other states” and as long as they are aimed at ensuring peace and justice between nations: In short, it doesn't say that some people's deficit is permissible and ours is not… And a second time for the EU Treaty itself, That (item 4, paragraph 2) specifies that “the Union respects the national identity inherent in the political and constitutional structure of the adhering States”. But it turned out to be an emphatic statement, destined to be disapplied: and now the paradox is that if someone quotes that passage, he is accused of anti-Europeanism…”.
Something didn't work.
«Right. The article 4 cited is contradicted by other norms of the same Trallato, and by the progressive applications of the European Court, which tends to proceed with apodictic motivations. Apply European grandmothers as if they weren't even international law, and assumes that there can never be a conflict with the constitutions of individual states…”.
What would it serve as “shield” effective?
“First things first, we should stop having a resigned and fearfully conformist attitude, a sort of anxiety of not being accepted that has made us, not paradoxically, “tolerated”. In Italy we tend to believe that the logic of someone else's fait accompli puts us in a position of inferiority. When instead, making us strong in the article 11 of the Constitution, we could always invoke equal conditions and compliance of the application of the treaties with our identity contained in the Labor Constitution, focus on symmetry, do like the others. Nothing excludes the possibility that Italy could carry out a systematic verification of what comes from Brussels: not to create conflicts, but to carry out dutiful careful monitoring of the fundamental structure of our democracy”.
It can be said that, after the EU intervention, the latest budget law has worsened? More taxes, more clauses, less investments.
“For months in Brussels they have declared an unprecedented alarm, arguing that Italy was endangering the survival of the euro. Obviously it was a highly contestable assumption. And the contradictions are evident: with France exceeding the parameters for the tenth time in eleven years, yet she is not told the same”.
But they don't see that there is a risk of recession throughout the EU?
“There are quite disturbing signs, amplified by the rigidity of the model based on exports imposed by the adaptation to the German approach. Istat data for the third quarter 2018 indicate a reduction in investments, consumption that is stagnant and tends towards the negative, while the only thing that holds up (but with less force than before) are exports. But all this export-led vision produces a strong vulnerability to external shocks. If a shock comes, if for some reason the strong connection between the economies is broken, these are huge problems”.
What strategy does Italy have regarding the next EU budget?
“Slippery question, because the negotiation involves a plurality of institutional and government subjects”.
Our veto is abstractly imaginable?
“I'll say something objective: as given, not as an opinion or proposal. Faced with a budget that,for decades, he constantly enunciated high-sounding titles and objectives, but not realized, veto – remembering that we are one
of the main net contributors – it becomes a serious way (and legal, that is, compliant with and not in violation of the treaties) to re-discuss the European structure, to bring out the unsaid, to understand where we want to go in shaping social coexistence and the effective well-being of the populations involved: and then try to understand how to remedy a dissatisfaction – think of Paris – which is not just Italian”.
Why the EU refuses to discuss the Savona plan?
“In official European offices, what is perceived is a unity without doubts in maintaining that everything is fine, that there are no different possible or desirable approaches”.
EU policies have not been effective and consistent enough with their declared goals?
“They need more, you must insist on the same paths. An uncritical self-sufficiency, a perception of themselves as infallible. We hope that from June things can gradually change”.
edited by Daniele Capezzone
source – https://www.ariannaeditrice.it/articolo.php?item_id=61389