TIME FOR CHANGE IN ITALY; Italians demand a vote to leave the EU as soon as possible, Italy is in danger of becoming a failed state as their GDP rockets to 155.7%, grassroots campaign being launched as Italians fear they will end up like Greece, a country abused by an uncaring EU elite

Dear All

If Coronavirus has taught us one thing politically, it is that the EU has been ineffective as an entity and that member states have had to go it alone. Coronavirus has served one purpose, it exposed the EU project as fundamentally broken, too slow to react and too big to manage. Brexit has taught those who run the EU nothing in my opinion, they still cling to a furlong hope that even if they can’t get the UK back, they can put in measures to fleece us financially. The negotiations have been long, tedious, lacking in goodwill and so far unproductive. As a Brexiteer, I consider that campaign I fought in 2016 as rather special because in essence, it was a fight about sovereignty being restored. The idea of ‘Brexit’ isn’t just a British idea, likeminded people in other European countries have begun to recognise as we did; the EU doesn’t work on behalf of the people.

This begs the question, who does the EU ‘work’ for if not the people of member states?

The short answer is big business, huge corporations and their various offshoots, EU rights such as employment rights can simply be swept away from people, as seen in the ‘Viking Case’. Once you look passed the window dressing of ‘EU rights’, you see that in the UK, our UK rights in many cases surpass the EU. Check it out online and be made aware of what Remainers, the pro EU lobby in the UK are trying to do to deceive you. Their latest pitch is ‘freedom of movement’ and how wonderful it is, but ask yourself this, how many people in the UK travel to Europe to work and back?

Very few!

The fight about ‘freedom of movement’ is not about free movement, it is about residency, what ‘freedom of movement’ does is over saturation of the jobs market. Ask yourself this, if you were applying for a job which would you prefer, applying against five other people or applying against five hundred people? What about other areas such as housing, same thing, applying against five other people or applying against five hundred people? You see, what working class people know is that ‘freedom of movement’ doesn’t help them, it hinders their life chances right across the social sphere. If life chances are being hindered in the UK, it is logical to assume that this must apply in some degree to other working class people in countries in the EU block.

The UK has shown the way in leaving, which has prompted others such as the Italians to reassess what value EU membership has for them. The Italians are losing faith in the EU; they like the UK are travelling the same journey. When Covid-19 came to Europe it was Italy that was hit first and hit really hard, the virus spread rapidly and death toll in some parts seemed to be like a set of a horror movie. Italians weren’t slow to recognise as the virus ravished the nation that little help came from its European neighbours in those first weeks in February and March. Neighbours weren’t helping and the EU was ineffective and if we are being blunt negligent. Italians were left to fight the battle as hospitals in the north were overwhelmed.

Coronavirus just didn’t kill the people which were bad enough, it also killed the economy stone dead; everything had to close down bar essential services and food distribution. Italy is a beautiful country; you could list many places of interest, it is a country that is steep in history which has been part of many world events. But Italy has a problem, it isn’t Germany, its economy is different, so even before the virus hit, Italy like many countries in Southern Europe was struggling. The economies of southern Europe don’t fare well because of Euro; Greece is a model of how the EU has utterly failed to protect a member state. In trouble, the Greeks were given loans which failed to turn it around, and importantly destroyed democracy. Powers that the Greeks should have kept were handed over to the EU on important decisions like setting a budget.

Italy is important to the EU because, here is where the Treaty of Rome launched the then European Economic Community in 1957, with Italy a founding member. From the ECC over time, the organisation morphed into the EU, from a trading organisation to a political organisation. So, what does your ordinary Italian on the street think now about the EU; well Rome real estate agent Marco Tondo, 34 says:

"I have changed my mind a little on Europe. We are facing an absolute emergency, and seeing countries turning their backs on each other is really awkward."

Marco is currently receiving nine weeks' redundancy pay from the government at 80% of his normal salary. He needs to sell houses, and he can’t do that if people have no jobs and the economy is depressed. How long will he be unemployed? How many more thousands of Italians will join him?

A problem which most people don’t talk about is the myth of continual growth. Continual growth is an illusion sold to people by politicians. Just as history teaches us of the rise and fall of an empire, it also applies to companies. How many businesses have you heard that are doing out of business, and we aren’t talking maw and pa enterprises, we are talking brand name companies? Continual growth; and the myth of continual growth couldn’t save them as they were too big and not enough cash flow reserves to serve their debts.

According to a survey of 1,000 Italians conducted in April by Tecné, 42% of respondents said they would leave the EU, up from 26% in November 2018. People are starting to wake up regarding the EU, the country's economic output will fall by 8% this year, but right across Europe others will experience a downturn, but let’s face it that is no comfort to the Italians. That scale of downturn will bloat Italy's public debt this year to the tune of almost 155.7% of GDP. There isn’t enough money being generated to service debts, and the downward spiral leads to the nightmare of taking EU loans. Italy could end up in deep trouble; they want the creation of coronabonds, which would have been underwritten by all eurozone members to share the burden of economic recovery.

Germany and the Netherlands ruled out any kind of debt mutualisation, the Netherlands have been particularly vocal. So, the word no, isn’t going down well in Italy. Carlo Altomonte, associate Professor of Economics of European Integration at Bocconi University said of the Italian PM’s suggestion:

“Asking for coronabonds was the perfect way to have the door slammed in his face. Mutualisation of debt is forbidden by EU treaties and Germany's constitution. I think Conte used it as a weapon in negotiations."

Italian PM Giuseppe Conte told the BBC that the outbreak threatened the future of Europe. Now the bad bit for Italy, on 18 March, the European Central Bank launched a €750bn (£660bn; $800bn) bond purchase programme to help the eurozone's more indebted countries by pushing down borrowing costs. Two days later, the European Commission announced the suspension of rules on public deficits, thus allowing countries to inject as much money as they needed into their economies. Then, on 8 April, the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers agreed on a €540bn rescue plan. It was made up of:

€200bn as a new credit line for companies, provided by the European Investment Bank

€100bn in loans to support temporary unemployment schemes

€240bn as a credit line provided by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to fund eurozone health systems

This bailout package is to suck weak countries in which is why the political debate in Italy has focused mostly on that last part of the package. The unpopular ESM is an intergovernmental bailout fund. This bailout fund is the mechanism that provided loans to Greece and some other EU countries during the financial crisis and dates back to 2012. You can understand why the Italians are upset; everyone saw how badly the EU treated Greece under the guise of ‘help’. One thing which sticks in my mind about the Greek disaster was the reports of pensioners searching for food in bins, Greece, an EU country, a cradle of civilisation and some of its people reduced to this.

I remember commenting years ago that this isn’t the European dream.

Do you know what led to Brexit, it was ordinary people; millions of people who had enough of the EU, likewise, the movement to leave if it gets going in Italy will come from ordinary people. They will setup stalls, print their leaflets and hold rallies. They will be the driving force as it was in the UK. It will come from people like Italian Valentina Rosi has recently lost her job and her faith in the EU. She said:

"Europe is proving once more to be useless, so we should leave the EU."

When enough Italians see the light, then a political figure will emerge to spearhead it, and then the real push for a referendum will start. Already an Italexit campaign ‘No Europe - For Italy’ is being organised and launches on Thursday with advice from Nigel Farage who was a key player in Brexit. Gianluigi Paragone, a former senator for the anti-establishment 5Star Movement, said Italy would no longer be "blackmailed" by the Brussels bloc. He added:

“This is the way forward: we can no longer be blackmailed by tax havens that allow themselves to offend the great prestige of Italy. For this reason, on July 23, at 10 am, in the press room of the Chamber of Deputies, I will officially launch my party for Italexit, presenting the name and logo.”

Finally, the EU is an organisation which is unwilling to reform; I labelled it an organisation which is anti country and anti worker. While it remains unaccountable and divorced from the concerns of ordinary people dissent and distrust will grow. The loss of a founding member such as Italy is a huge blow, it could be what the countries in southern Europe need to kick start their own exit campaigns. I found campaigning against the EU to be rather easy, because their record is a matter of public record, their failures, their mindset and their attitude will be their undoing. I hope the Italians find the courage to have that referendum on EU membership.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University