Speeches

Madam President, Russia takes Crimea, and Ukraine attacks Donbas; Russia invades Ukraine and the USA and Europe send weapons to Ukraine, so Ukraine takes back Donbas, but Russia asks Belarus for help and Belarus deploys its armies on the border, so NATO does military exercises in the war area and Russia makes possible the use of nuclear weapons. Where are we going to? This is the problem. This is the question I have. This plenary should represent European people, and the European people outside this room don’t want this escalation. But I didn’t listen to anyone making a proposal to stop the war, apart from someone. So my final question is, who does this plenary actually represent?

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I believe that this time people are really very afraid. They are afraid because they see that this escalation is not only wanted on one side, but is wanted on both sides. They are not only afraid of Putin and his threats. They're afraid of us Westerners, too. I want to reread a Biden statement issued in February before the Russian invasion: If Russia invades Ukraine, we will bring down Nord Stream and make sure that it no longer exists. Here, these statements are frightening and confusing, because you do not understand well where they want to take us. Nor is it clear what the European Union really wants to do, since no Head of State or Head of Government has really taken a step in the direction of peace. I believe that the European Union must take a third role in order to stop this war in the interests of all. The only head of state who had the courage to say something in this direction was the Pope: Putin stops the war and Zelensky is open to serious peace proposals. Therefore, colleagues, I urge you, let us listen at least to the words of the Pope.

Thank you Commissioner, but I would like to tell you that in the meantime the new government has already cancelled the Ministry of the South, it will no longer exist, and this tells you a lot about what will happen in the coming months. But to this I would also like to add a question: For years, the version of governments that is reported in the Commission, that is reported in Europe, does not correspond to reality. I therefore call on you to go beyond what the Member States say and report, because the Member State, like Italy, is primarily responsible for this situation. So go beyond what they tell you.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, Commissioner, I bring the voice of the South of Italy, the voice of a territory that is still more populous than Greece, more populous than Sweden. It is, however, a territory with the highest dizzying rate of depopulation in recent years and has no equal in any other country in the European Union. But we know that depopulation is concentrated where there is poverty. Despite years of cohesion policy, the gap between Southern Italy and the rest of Europe is increasing every year. So we have to ask ourselves why cohesion policy is not working in southern Italy. The point is that there is no need to allocate more and more European resources in disadvantaged areas, if the Member State is then free to cancel the ordinary expenditure in those same territories. In Italy for years ordinary resources have been shifting from the poor part of the country to the rich part of the country, thwarting any possible cohesion objective. So depopulation is only a consequence of the lack of controls by the European Union on a State that acts unfairly as it does for Italy. I ask you: Is the European Commission taking action? Can you intervene? Can you check? Because that is what we need to think about and that is what we need to do.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I believe that, beyond the current and medium-term crises, we can certainly say and observe that cohesion policy has everywhere had the effect of reducing the territorial divide on the territory of the European Union. This is the case, however, except in Italy, as I say to the rapporteurs, where economic, social and territorial inequalities have been increasing more and more, without any reversal of the trend for decades. This is despite the fact that the Recovery and Resilience Facility specifically addresses territorial inequalities as one of its horizontal priorities. And so I report the conclusions of the Department of Cohesion Policies and the Budget Office of the Italian Parliament, which point to the real risk of failure of the medium-term objectives, because the ways in which the Italian plan was conceived provide for distribution mechanisms that, in fact, will transfer and transfer funding from the poor part of the country to the rich part of the country. I ask the European Commission what it intends to do to prevent this distortion of the objectives that harm not only Italy, but the European Union as a whole.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I begin by saying that I strongly condemn this Russian military attack on Ukraine and I am absolutely on the side of the Ukrainian people, of course. I say this at the start so as not to be misunderstood. And I am also on the side of the European people, who are unknowingly taking the greatest risks of this war and the greatest costs of this war. In the name of all these people, I believe we should say clearly here whether we want to win this war, whether we are here to win it, or whether we are here to stop this war. Because if we listen to the statements of the leading Western leaders, if we listen to Biden's words, if we listen to the words of people like Boris Johnson, we can never find the word "peace" in what they say. I sincerely believe that none of these people really intend to stop this war. And no matter how many Ukrainians are dying or how many European citizens will suffer: They don't want to stop this war. So the first question I ask is: Can we win this war? Do we really believe that we can subvert, that we can overthrow Putin's regime, without Putin using nuclear power first? The second question I ask is: What do we Europeans want? Do we realize that, on the one hand, we are giving arms to the Ukrainians, on the other hand, we are giving money to Russia and, in the meantime, we are imposing sanctions that only burden European citizens? For me it is only necessary to stop this war and, to stop it, it is necessary to have the courage to say, indeed to stop saying, that Putin is a criminal madman and to sit at that table and talk to Putin. Because if Putin is a criminal madman, then maybe we have to ask ourselves if we in Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, maybe we were criminal madmen just as much and maybe we are entitled to sit at that table and talk to Putin? And then the last question I ask is: Is there anyone here who really intends to sit at that table in the interest of the Ukrainian people and in the interest and defense of the European people? Is there anyone in here who dares to say "Mr. No" to the United States of America? And is there anyone in here who has the courage to say "Mr. No," really!, to this cursed war?

Madam President, Commissioners Dombrovskis and Gentiloni, ladies and gentlemen, this report on the European Semester rightly focuses on increasing gender, generational, social, economic and, above all, territorial inequalities due to the COVID-19 crisis. Unfortunately, we did not have time to get out of a crisis that we already find ourselves in another one, the one generated by the war, and you have declared that the Recovery and Resilience Facility is essential to limit the impact of the new crisis. I would point out that immediately the Italian government hastened to launch a plan B to support companies, located in the Centre and in the North, sacrificing once again the Mezzogiorno of Italy, which will pay the price of war. So, once again, the Italian government has done nothing to absorb the resources that touch the South and favors the North with good peace of the fight against territorial inequalities. I believe that the European Commission should not now accept any change in national plans if we do not want to widen the economic crisis further.

Madam President, Commissioner Dombrovskis, Commissioner Gentiloni, ladies and gentlemen, today 22 Member States have received a positive assessment of the recovery and resilience plan, including Italy, which is the country most heavily targeted by the European Commission. Yet we have pointed out, in all possible ways, that the Italian plan does not respect the priority of reducing gender, generational and above all territorial inequalities. This is because the Italian government is hostage to a single party in the North that does not allow it to absorb the resources that have been allocated mainly to the South with the aim of appropriating them later. The South lacks kindergartens, but the Italian government builds them in the North. The South lacks infrastructure, but the Italian government builds it in the North. The South lacks staff, but the Italian government is hiring it in the North. Now, I believe that everyone in this room realizes that if Italy fails, the whole European Union will fail. That is why I say, at this point, that if Europe fails, it is your fault because we have warned you and you have the task of being vigilant.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, what can we Europeans still do? I say that fighting global warming means fighting social cooling. We have the example of large industries, including European ones, which are virtuous in rich countries, while dumping poisons in poor countries. And I am referring not only to Africa or Latin America, but also to the poorest areas of our continent, where the oil industry, for example, has a license to pollute the water that is drunk by citizens, and where the steel industry, for example, has permission to pollute the air that citizens breathe. Poverty is the precondition for accepting the unacceptable, with the not insignificant detail that polluting emissions, just like a virus for the pandemic, know no borders. So it is not enough to tighten legislation in rich countries, it is also necessary to prevent industry from shifting its production to poor countries.

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we believe that this annual report is overall balanced when it comes to sustainable finance and taxonomy, supervision of banking crises, and implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering Directive, as well as the effects on large-scale sales of non-performing loans. However, we believe it is weak or unambitious about safeguards for savers, and we have serious concerns about both rules and capital requirements when they do not reflect risk. A final point on the subject of access to credit: in the most lagging geographical areas, considered a priority in the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the banking sector is virtually absent, making it virtually impossible to finance the real economy. Extraordinary measures are therefore needed to finance the recovery and encourage lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, precisely in the geographical areas considered to be at greatest risk.