David SASSOLI, EP President, delivers a speech on the verticalization of power; constitutional and institutional aspects at the Meeting dell'Amicizia, Rimini, Italy. The Foundation Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples organizes a festival every year since 1980 at Rimini (Italy) with the participation of political personalities, managers, representatives of different religions and cultures, intellectuals and artists, athletes, and protagonists of the world scene.

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Italy

SASSOLI, David Maria (S&D, IT, S&D, IT)

Speech by David SASSOLI, EP President, on the verticalization of power; constitutional and institutional aspects

Title: Speech by David SASSOLI, EP President, delivers a speech at the Meeting dell&apos;Amicizia on the verticalization of power; constitutional and institutional aspects

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, Good evening, thanks for the invitation. As has been the case for some time, the meeting invites us to profound reflections. In this case also to important financial statements, especially to grasp those dynamics that the contemporary world develops by proposing us new and increasingly complex scenes. The same theme is given to your event, 'the courage to say I', lends itself to different considerations, depending on the area in which the desire to strengthen our responsibility is declining, not to compress the originality of each person, to increase participation in social life. And no one escapes that the Covid crisis, so dramatic, profound, constitutes a watershed between a world that is known to us, that we have learned to know, and a new scene, which we still struggle to imagine and interpret, in which to identify our presence.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, We're still missing a lot more. And we understand that the movie of history cannot be rewound and let us return to the world before. But at the same time, there is a sense of strong restlessness, which still prevents you from writing new pages for a new time. We must not be afraid of the crisis, we must not resign ourselves to an opportunistic passivity. But this is a time of unprecedented dangers, and also of extraordinary opportunities. Because everything we built in the second part of the twentieth century, developing democracy and freedom in our countries, is called today to deal with very hard and risky global development, certainly complex. Our idea of person, of the inviolability of human life, the affirmation of universal rights, the inspiration for the integral development of the person, are the ingredients with which we present ourselves to the new challenges. Will it be enough?

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, The goal of a new humanism is certainly possible, but it is not obvious. We must all thank the President of the Republic Mattarella, who right here at the opening of the meeting, relaunched the need to update our personalism. We need a thought that lives up to the challenge of contemporaneity, and together we need witnesses: witnesses in the flesh, individual coherences, stories of the life of friendship. From this point of view, the magisterium of Pope Francis is very challenging for Catholics, and it is no coincidence that someone, even among Catholics, it must be said, gets into the pose of the rush that awaits the passage of the flood wave.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Gospel radicality is stronger than a doctrine and questions our consciences deep down, calls us to be faithful in everyday life, in the encounter with the other, with those who are weaker. It challenges us to be in history with the soul of the builders. On the other hand, we know it is the gift, not selfishness as supported by liberalism that is presumed hegemon. The gift is the energy that builds communities, which makes them stronger. The idea of a person is inextricably linked to that of social formations, vital worlds, intermediate communities. And freedom is never divisible. There is no personal freedom without the freedom of the neighbor. There is no freedom if there is exploitation, addiction, and servitude next to us. There is no freedom if there is exploitation next to us, and there is no freedom of the person without the freedom of communities.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Edgar Morin wrote very well, who has just turned 100 but does not stop helping us to think, that "the only thing that can protect freedom is the constant presence, in the spirit of its members, their solidarity with a community and a feeling of responsibility towards this community". The pandemic tells us a lot about ourselves. It made us understand how much we depend on others, but also how much it is possible to reconnect politics with the person. It has clearly shown us which tools are suitable for facing the new challenges, and at the same time where we are fragile, ineffective, where we need to improve. The Covid crisis tells us what our European democracy must improve in, and where the relationship between the European Union and the nation-states must change. There are many Covid lessons, let's not put them in a drawer.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, People first. It's still within our reach. And no challenge, no geopolitical confrontation, no crisis, can rob us of this desire to protect our identity. It is enough to know, however, that we cannot do it alone. As we did after the end of the Second World War, or as we believed it was possible only for the West, sufficient to itself. We are confident. Because the action against the pandemic in Europe could lead to a very different course of things without the choices that have been made by our Community institutions.

Without the European Union, we would have had a conflict between nations: on the search for vaccines, on health policy, on assistance to those who would have been lost their jobs. We would have compromised Schengen and raised borders, could not share the debt, and there would be no powerful support for the national economies. The tragedy caused a real revolution in the European response, a revolution in five steps. I want to sum them up. First, the fiscal compact rules were suspended until 2022, and we are thinking about the post-Covid scenario. We need rules, but new rules.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Secondly, with European action, national states have significantly increased their debt-to-GDP ratio. To defend what? Families and businesses from an economic and social shock that was produced by the pandemic. Thirdly, we have experienced the paradox of never having as many resources available for investments as in a time of crisis like this. This had never happened, too. It is in fact a form of risk-sharing between member countries that before the pandemic was strictly prohibited, excluded.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Fourthly, central banks have purchased up to 25% of member countries' public securities, and the European Central Bank plans, if necessary, to reach up to 33%, thus avoiding the increase in debt turns into a spreads crisis on the financial markets. In fact, the ECB's commitment to purchase securities made the debt sustainable. Fifth, all this was possible in exchange for good conditionality on the use of funds. The resources of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the PNRR, must be spent. They should have to be well spent. Having precise objectives in mind, such as digitalization and ecological transition and certain times, which define the European Union and on which the institution I preside over will also be called to watch.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, The experiment, dear friends, was very successful. Families and businesses were protected as far as possible, making this crisis very different from that of 2009. It is a macroeconomic revolution that makes resources available, and that the account has been, and will be lighter, thanks to the increased activism of the European Central Bank and the joint issues of titles. In 2009, you will remember, the financial crisis burned private savings, only the south of the Euro area struck symmetrically, it was not allowed to counter it with expansive fiscal and monetary policies.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Today the crisis has been symmetrical. All the countries of the Union have solidarized with each other, aware that they are on the same boat. And additional monetary and fiscal policies avoided the destruction of savings and made money resources available. Think about the fact that bank deposits in Italy have grown by almost 90 billion. And all of this is the fuel of the recovery we are observing. We have entered new terrain. And now that we've discovered that macroeconomic balances hold, it would certainly be madness to go back. Let's just think about what it would be like to restore the goal of the fiscal compact and force our countries to converge on a debt ratio of 60%. It would be a way to kill families and businesses, choke all nation-states, and bring the European Union to its knees.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, It is therefore essential for the five steps we have remembered to be confirmed. And here the matter becomes very political. Because the real challenge, and we already see many environments betting on a return to the rules before, will be to become aware that what was done during the pandemic must become the new economic policy of the Union. For this reason, a question is a must. These resources, these policies put in place by the European Union will have to end with the end of the health and economic emergency, as some liberal and conservative forces demand? Or some resources, deployed in the fight against the pandemic and the social crisis generated, will have to turn into a new scaffold of European public policies and consequently also into an institutional renewal of Europe?

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, The answer to this question is not a puzzle game, it is the question from which all other issues descend. Because of the conclusions, we will draw will also depend on our ability to deal with climate change and the great green conversion project to which we have linked the development of European countries in next decades and more. We have to confirm the choices we made. Making them permanent will allow the Union to assume political personalities on the international scene, and these days, in these weeks, we realize how important and fundamental this is. If the instruments had not been abandoned, the rules, the paradigms that were only in force two years ago, we would have been in the match today. We could have achieved the results we achieved. This is the great historic challenge we face.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, The breakthrough with the Next Generation EU gives us a great chance, to take root in a new European growth and development policy for everyone. In the next 2-3 years we play our chances for the next 20 years. And no one can ignore that success or failure will depend heavily on Italy. If our country proves to use PNR money in a virtuous way. the new economic policy will be established and the five steps based on the exchange of expansive policies, condition of risk, interventionism by the ECB, the appropriate use of resources will ensure the writing those new pages in the European experience that all or many of us expect. And above all, allow us to address the risks and uncertainties of the new world with responsibility and coherence. A failure would be for Italy very expensive but it would cost a lot to the European project.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Those who think of parenthesized what happened, to enclose everything in emergency, to return to the policies of the first risk of making Europe fall into a structural crisis with unpredictable outcomes, but certainly very negative. In short, the challenge of this time requires us to live this ridge of history by abandoning the emergency logic. It is true we started from an emergency but now we can design thanks to the work of the European institutions and national institutions the new Europe and a renewed Italy in a renewed Europe. This is the real complication of this political phase. This is the priority of our agenda. In Italy we have a government that we ask for stability and this is certain the premise; a government that is not an expression of a traditional political formula but would be wrong, I believe, to enclose his experience in a temporally limited state of exception.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, If the most important game is played in Europe and with the European Union that the times of national policies must be synchronized and the very concept of stability cannot be reduced to exorcising moments of crisis. The interest of the country that in my opinion coincides with the most authentic European interest is that the change in Europe becomes structural and many of the instruments adopted become permanent. That is why I believe that the government's mission cannot run out with the completion of the vaccination campaign or the start of PNR, very important commitments, but it should be about stabilizing the European breakthrough. In short, Italian stability is a political project and not only a condition for facing a difficult season. Stability makes sense because it consolidates the breakthrough in Europe and, consequently, our national investment budget and social cohesion policies.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, Before the pandemic to govern the European institutions, some rules and guidelines penalize solidarity in the name of an often abstract, unjust rigor that produced strong inequalities and curbed development and therefore the growth of the continent in global competition. Make it stable and give root to the change started with the Green Deal and then went on with all the tools you know and strengthened from the tools that have been made available to all of our countries. It allows us today to adopt a real strategy for change, we could afford to say that when the emergency is over, Europe can return to the one before? Many of us are convinced that Green Deal should unfold its effects, the fiscal and banking union must take new, more community institutional forms with fewer veto powers, with greater synergies between countries that share values of freedom and democracy, that the spirit of solidarity can allow us to develop common policies useful to our countries and our public opinions.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, If Europe strengthens societies and communities in terms of development, it will have more strength to affirm in the world the civil and democratic values that are part of our identity. It is certainly not a question of separating the two banks of the Atlantic. On the contrary, it is a question of composing a new balance in which Europe finally manages to pool what hasn't been capable to do until now: foreign policy and defence policy. While waiting to better understand what the steps to be taken towards the new Afghan authorities, we think it is an ethical value, certainly, it is essential to make every effort to ensure security for those who have collaborated with us in these 20 years, have believed in us. If we believe how we believe in the power of diplomacy, we will always be available for dialogue even with those who are very far from us. But to reach out, dear gentlemen, you have to be two and it's not enough to want to sit at a table if the counterparty is not comfortable too.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, In recent days I have been in Latvia, Lithuania, in Estonia and the Baltic countries, who are struggling with a hard confrontation with the integrity of our borders. The issue of European space security threatened by hybrid guerrillas or cyberattacks that attempt to condition our lifestyle and democracies is a priority we cannot overcome, turning the other side or pretending like nothing. The same that we cannot afford to do with respect to the humanitarian crises that are asking for us in the Mediterranean and now, for example, in Afghanistan. It is clear that the dramatic Afghan crisis concerns Europe. The defeat of the West calls into question our identity in the global context but we cannot become baffled and powerless spectators. Indignation is widespread among us, fears linked to the choices of the new rulers, the wounded consciences of our peoples risk dispersing themselves in the air without a common assumption of responsibility of the European Union.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, We must know that our ability to respond will depend on the degree of solidarity that we will be able to demonstrate within ourselves in building common European policies. Without a European health policy, how can we deal with the next challenges that will come after COVID-19? Without a common security policy, we will be fragile and exposed to threats of authoritarian regimes, without a clear European policy, we will not be able to support the confrontation with China. Without a European immigration and asylum policy, we will not be able to face challenges that in the coming years will come, from the Sahel to Asia will see millions and millions of people in motion looking at Europe as the land of their refuge. Italy has a decisive role in all this for the conformation and destiny of Europe and its stability is a prerequisite for it in the short and medium term.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, We must not forget, we have started from the new challenges to which the global world calls us, we have to understand the complexity of the problems we face, to the risks and pressures we have to undergo, but as always, dear friends, everything is held and we Europeans are asked today to participate in writing the rules of the global world and we have the chance. Yes, we have the chance and we must believe it. Because we are still able to connect individual responsibility to a plausible space and this space is the European dimension. We had already understood it before COVID, but today COVID has made it more evident and we told it here again two years ago at meeting, that only common European sovereignty can allow us to give meaning and breath to the national sovereignty.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), David SASSOLI, EP President, The courage to say I, for me it calls for a strong individual and collective responsibility and to the awareness that we Europeans are called once again to participate in a great work of liberation of the man. Thank you.

Speech by David SASSOLI, EP President, on the verticalization of power; constitutional and institutional aspects

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