I feel particularly honoured to receive the degree honoris causa that you have generously conferred; and even more honoured to see my name alongside those of eminent Italian and foreign personalities who have, over time, received this high distinction before me. These include above all Luigi Einaudi, my most distant predecessor in the seven-year term of President of the Republic, but the one I feel closest to for his example for my work at the Quirinale. And I would also like to recall the names of Altiero Spinelli and Amartya Sen, about whom I would like to briefly talk and offer my personal tribute.

I feel closely bound to Altieri Spinelli since the time he began to work, together with others, as a “bridgehead” – he defined himself thus in his Diaries – for the penetration of European and federalist ideas in the Italian Communist Party already by the late 1960s. I learnt a lot from his character and his battle, even though constituted a unique figure.  During his long and troubled experience in prison and exile under fascism – which culminated in the great idea of the Ventotene Manifesto – he broke away from his party and did not join any other political force. When he was freed, Altiero acquired a personality different from that of anyone else: he fought for a single cause – a united Europe – and his thinking, as well as his acting, became wholly European.  The history and character of Altiero Spinelli is unrepeatable, a lesson and a stimulus that have lost none of their force.

About Amartya Sen, who you have rightly hailed here as Maestro, I will only speak of his interest and his regard for Italy and Europe, which I discovered in the meetings and conversations through which I gradually came to know him. The close ties he established with the Spinelli family transformed into an authentic ideal link with Altiero’s battle. A formidable connection with Italy had already been gained by his relationship – first as a student and then a colleague, at Trinity College, Cambridge – with an exceptional Italian, Piero Sraffa. I referred to both Spinelli and Sen
in my recent demanding public speeches, since these are pertinent and illuminating references in the striving for historical-cultural reflection that, this autumn, I have repeatedly had the opportunity to develop around key aspects of the connections between Italy and Europe and between Europe and the world. Still continuing in this vein, today I intend focusing on the subject of the
behaviours of leaders and the political forces as contributory cause in the contradictions and divisions in which the European Union finds itself embroiled and, at the same time, as responsible for the future choices to overcome the current crisis and troubles.

All together, and for too long, a realistic acknowledgement of how the status of Europe has been and will be deeply changed has not been conveyed from the political channels to the broader sections of public opinion and the electorate in our countries. Owing to many historical events, which have converged in the broader process of globalisation, we must more than ever speak of “our small European continent”. The centre of world development has shifted far from Europe and the Atlantic. We are faced with new major economic and political forces. Emerging countries: President Draghi recently said that “emerging markets account for 60% of world production: as of 2000, three-quarters of world growth is due to these countries, half of exports from the Euro area go to these markets”. It may be generally worrying that they are currently showing signs of a “probably not momentary” slowing, but this does not alter the terms for Europe of the difficult challenge it must more than ever face. A challenge in which the pace of the technological revolution and the inexorable laws of competitiveness form an integral part.

To what extent have our governing classes and political leaders made citizens-voters aware of all this? Not in order to react with a defeatist spirit, accepting that such a tough fight inevitably means a fatal decline, but because such a challenge is to be faced together in order to “maintain a significance in the world as Europeans” despite having lost the privileged status previously enjoyed. It is therefore to be fought in order to still give our distinctive contribution to building a new world order, safeguarding – also for our own countries and societies – the essential gains in civilisation and wellbeing gradually achieved. Unfortunately an unhearing, unseeing attitude has been allowed to take root, apparently wishing to eschew unpleasant and alarming realities. Reactions of rejection and closure, of anachronistic illusions of maintaining the status quo and of prolonging the expectations created in the past have been allowed to grow. These are the responsibilities of politics, owing to the weakness and ambiguity by which it has been marked for years.

We are thus faced with nationalistic regressions, populist insurgencies, old and new extremism, which have conspired to obscure and counter the only authentic historical need for Europe, coinciding with the long-term strategic interest of the European nation-states, i.e. the need for growing cooperation and integration and, now, a genuine quantum leap towards political union. Going in this direction is exactly the positive responsibility that politics is called to take on. This means starting with an agenda of urgent needs, which are worrying and dividing the EU institutions: urgencies that need to be resolved in a longer timeframe than the prevailing one, to bring about real progress towards increasingly advanced forms of integration, particularly in the Eurozone. On each of the points on the agenda, the same reluctance and restrictions continue to emerge: a retreating to national dimensions, barricades and populist opposition.

This is what is happening as regards the devastating and unavoidable topic of recent months: the refugee crisis. And it is what should not happen when faced with the sudden, dramatic focus in recent weeks of the deadly challenge of terrorism, of extreme fanaticism in the form of an Islamic State.

With his invariable clarity and balance, Jacques Delors made a statement on 7 November to counter the misinformation circulating – “refugees are victims, not threats” – and to support the cause of welcoming and integration. But he did so without opposing the appeal for more understanding of security worries. He stresses that, in order to guarantee border controls also against the arrival of terrorists, a backwards and ineffective step of each country protecting its own borders must be avoided, instead of defending and strengthening instruments such as the Schengen Agreement and others that have and will increasingly allow us to apply a European approach that combines more freedom – the great achievement of free movement of people – and more security. And this point seems crucial, considering the dramatic experience of the terrorist attack in Paris: border control and, in each country, control of the territory, form the framework within which we can act together in Europe to defuse the threat of terrorism, for which we are called to act as a united force against ISIS using every means at international level. The clear reference to the Schengen Agreement – which in any case allows for suspension if required by an emergency and can provide other devices without being distorted – reaffirms the validity of a common European approach, and the preservation of conquests of freedom that must not be sacrificed and thereby permit the enemies of our core values to win.

And there is more: looking at today’s world means for us to above all consider massive inflows (not just towards Europe!) of people requesting protection and asylum, fleeing from devastating wars – such as the one that has spread beyond all expectations in Syria – or from conflicts and persecution in countries or chronic disintegration and armed violence. But we must also reflect on another phenomenon, the emerging of a rash reaction by the populations of areas – especially in Africa – that remain in conditions of extreme poverty and general degradation. A relationship of clarifying dialogue and concrete, generous cooperation between Europe and the countries of origin of the influx of economic migrants seeking work becomes a decisive matter. There certainly needs to be a rigorous screening of economic immigrants to our countries from those clearly eligible to obtain asylum, working in agreement to ensure that illegal immigrants are sent back to their own countries, but also accompanied by “the creation” – as suggested by Delors – of “European routes of legal immigration”, within well-defined limits and controls.

In the Europe of 28 countries, in a more interconnected continent than ever – ranging from the economy to law – politics has remained national. In my opinion, this is the source of the shortcomings of the past and of the uncertainty of the future of our Union in crisis. Politics have remained national, in the sense that it has been conditioned in a decisive way, in every country of the EU, by a narrow and petty perspective of national interests, and by demagogic pressures resulting in anti-politics and anti-Europeanism. Caving in to these pressures, the tendency to dissimulate and compromise, has dominated or seriously influenced for many years, even at the heart of the political forces that are in principle pro-European.  Politics has remained fragmented in increasingly asphyxiating national levels, and in the many individual political-constituency competitions at national level. It has thus proved ever less able to lead European decisions or even to refer about them.

Is it possible in these conditions to produce the change in pace needed, the necessary determination to give more strength to the supranational status of the European Union, delegating new and larger portions of previously national sovereignty to a European government with a shared sovereignty? Can that common policy be achieved for asylum and immigration that the situations and prospects now being perceived by everyone dramatically urge? And can the system of European security and defence policy, as stated in the Lisbon Treaty, really be put on the right track, up to now merely stuck at the level of hypocritical pronouncements? Possibly also adopting a special innovation to give immediate unity to the European effort against terrorism? At the same time, is it possible to provide a European foreign policy with that assertiveness, that ability to propose and influence that it still lacks despite being not without the significant and currently more dynamic institutional instruments, but still, for instance, badly squeezed between the continuing dispute with Russia brought about by the muddle of the Ukrainian crisis and the initial restoring of an axis of global cooperation between Europe-America-Russia? My “is it possible” question is not rhetoric. The answer, quite problematical in the present time, can only be given by the political system itself.

The real point is to strengthen all the channels for citizen participation and for genuine democracy in the process of forming European decisions. However, to this end it is necessary to overcome the current lack of a “European public sphere” which permits the circulating and comparing of opinions on a wide scale. A real integration is necessary – while distinguishing their respective roles – between the European Parliament and national parliaments. Not only is an ideal and moral renewal and revitalisation of political parties required, especially in Italy, but also their Europeanization. I am, of course, thinking of the parties that have supported – from the outset or later on with the expanding of the Community and the Union – the cause of unity and European integration, and have seriously contributed to the construction of Europe. These refer to the four parties defining themselves European: the People’s Party, the Socialist Party, the Liberal Party and the Greens Party. However these have remained largely formal containers, rather amorphous and of little active vitality. The national parties adhering to them have always abided by national ways of thinking in their political and electoral practices, and have continued to compete on national issues much more than on European choices, giving much more importance to national and local elections than those for the European Parliament.

This is also because the pro-European parties as such, poorly structured and legitimised, are not a source of coherent processing and unitary characterisation offering an effective pro-European stance. The first seed of a fair electoral competition between the four European and fundamentally pro-European parties needs to be cultivated: the first seed was sown, in the spring of 2014, by the presenting of the respective candidates for the President of the European Commission, with a view to the European Parliament election. As can be seen, my call for full acceptance of responsibility – by politics – for moving further forward to European integration is not only directed at leaders of government and parties in the EU countries. It is addressed to multiple entities, above all the parties, and also to various parts of civil society, including those directly concerned with the development of the social dimension – now woefully inadequate – of the integration process. That said, however, it is up to the leaderships of national governments and of European institutions to take the first steps regarding the dilemmas currently on the table, particularly the problem of the referendum being proposed for the United Kingdom by its Prime Minister Cameron. A referendum that not only involves that great nation that, for many good historical and present day reasons, we do not want to see breaking away from the path of continental European unity. A great nation that has kept the design of genuine integration launched in 1950 at arm’s length right from the outset, and has often reiterated. Apart from that, I was saying that, basically, London is proposing the idea of an institutionalised distinction, and of a regulated collaboration, between two Europes, one of which shares with the other choices already made in common and some shared pillars, but not an “ever closer union”, starting with the single currency and all its implications.

There is no need to repeat here the long list of formulas developed by the various parties up to 25 years ago, for drawing up solutions that would enable differentiated participations in the European project. It is sufficient to emphasise that, with the introduction of the Euro and with the rules of the Treaties on enhanced cooperation, such a differentiation has already been accepted in principle and has become operative. We already have a Europe of 19 countries and another of 9, and one should walk at a quicker pace towards goals that the other does not intend to share. However, the matter is very complex. Has the present group of Eurozone countries – excepting those leaving and
new entries – the consistency of intent and sufficient common political will to build the coherently integrated and supranational core of whole Europe, that is united but only to different degrees?  And starting with Germany, France and Italy, is there a shared determination and sufficient critical mass to proceed clearly with the decisions that many invoke, and which I have tried to address in my speech? These are the dilemmas, and they are serious. Let’s discuss them at a heightened level of awareness and respect for the various concerns and opinions. The concern to avoid forcing situations that can lead to splits and be unrealistic has largely guided in past decades the actions of people like Delors who certainly reached out for supranational integration of Europe through successive advances, leaving the historical process to complete its evolution. But can we currently consider a cautious gradualism as still sustainable, and an uncertainty about the outcomes to achieve at the pace that now seems indispensable? Let’s talk about it, and clearly, despite the commotion of urgencies and dramatic occurrences and without becoming lost in the whirlwind of continual European Council meetings.

Can we make it? Let’s at least start with spreading – much more than we’ve been doing for a long time – the awareness of the many goals achieved and built in our Europe, and let’s do it without fears of appearing rhetoricians and traditionalist, and yet without giving free rein to any populist sentiment. And let’s start all together at the same time by re-motivating the European project, starting with the reality of the world as it is today and with a renewed relationship of Europe with the world. But let’s not stop here, cowed by a sense of difficulty. And if the supreme proof of political vocation and vision is to be given, both individually (which was the emblematic case of Altiero Spinelli) and, in some way, on a larger scale, it is given by attempting the impossible every time. And an ever more united Europe is precisely the “impossible” that we should strive for with all our strength. And I conclude by saying that, if thinking of the changing, churning world around us, of the world that, since Paris of November 13, has shown us its most sinister side, the question automatically comes to mind: Europe, if not now, when?

Translated by Roger Gibson

Exerpt from the lecture given by the President Emeritus of the Republic on 27 November 2015 at the University of Pavia on the occasion of the conferment of the honorary degree in History.