Mr President-in-Office of the Council, our aversion to your politics and your government, as you know, is deep-rooted, and it would not make sense for us to do a U-turn now that your politics are being applied to Europe and not just Italy. I think there is a rhetoric surrounding the six-month presidency of a nation, which cannot hide the political reality: the reality is that every presidency is the presidency of a government, not of a country; therefore, if people are against the Bush Administration it does not mean they are anti-American, and if people in Italy and Europe are against their government, it does not mean they are against Italy. Europe is, of course, an important episode; it is a challenge that has quite rightly been called historic. We are afraid that your government will aggravate rather than favour the necessary choices. You are starting with a handicap: in Italy the country’s consensus is split, a major part of European public opinion is contrary (and I believe the causes lie precisely in your politics), the bases for the economic crisis in the country have been distorted, as it has been under severe strain with the conflict of interests and the conflict between the established powers. I personally feel the worst damage has been done by a minister in your government who can speak of the need to open fire on convoys of immigrants at sea. We shall not, however, protest about your government’s presidency; we shall confine ourselves instead to criticising your politics, the bases of which are essentially the primacy of the United States of America and the primacy of the market. Both are factors of potential crisis for Europe: one, the United States, driven today by a doctrine of pre-emptive war; the other, the market, faced by a clearly developing crisis of social cohesion. You, Mr President-in-Office, have put forward a proposal for a transatlantic, neo-liberal, post-democratic Europe. We think this proposal goes against the vocation and historic mission of Europe today, of a Europe that needs another perspective. Someone spoke of a Keynesian policy; I beg to differ: large-scale infrastructure is not a Keynesian policy; it may instead be a threat to the environment through deregulation, and it also runs the risk of not being completed because of the difficulties in financing it. There is another side to your politics, however, which is neo-liberal through and through: it is what we call job insecurity and you call flexibility; it is what is shown – as, indeed, in other European countries – in the attack on the social security system. This, Mr President-in-Office, is not Europe. The real Europe is the one calling for independence from US policies for the sake of a different political culture, the one calling for a different social model. Your strongpoint today is the weakness of political Europe, because the truth is that this political Europe is founded on a democratic deficit, and because I think that the Convention, too, is ambiguous and weak, a far cry from the great progressive constitutions. Therefore, Mr President-in-Office, we shall not oppose you for the sake of this Europe, but for the sake of another Europe: a social and democratic Europe. That is why our hope is – and please do not take this as a sign of hostility – that mass movement action in Europe will grow in both numbers of participants and importance during the Italian Presidency. There is just one thing on which we should like to be able to come together with you: in calling loudly for a moratorium on the death penalty. That, at least, would be a good sign of civilisation.

Political group: GUE-NGL