##destars ( if i may call them that ) that guided his personal, professional and institutional life, from the outset of his career to the highest offices he held : the stability of the currency, balanced public finances, the ideal of a united europe. the latter, however, should not be read in opposition to love for the smaller, national homelands ; rather, europe was to be founded on a healthy sense of patriotism – to stand as a bastion against the fratricidal destruction seen repeatedly in the course of history. in the two volumes of his contributions to the journal nuova antologia, all three stars are very clearly visible. europe 3. i shall begin with the third star, the european ideal, to which ciampi ’ s writings return again and again. this aspect, perhaps, strikes me more than anything else. 4. in 1966, recalling his time spent in scanno in abruzzo, from 1943 to 1944, while waiting to try and get beyond the front of the italian co - belligerent forces ( the regular army, which after the 1943 armistice started fighting alongside the allied forces ), ciampi wrote : ‘ during that time, we became convinced – and it is a conviction that still drives and sustains us – that the european union must be created for reasons that go far beyond economic considerations. we must remain fully aware of the tragedies that can be triggered by the rekindling of nationalism, creating a risk of moral and political decline that has certainly not diminished in our time, as witnessed by the tragedy of the former yugoslavia. europe must either move towards a union solidly based on common institutions, or risk going backwards. we must not forget the dramas we have lived through, to spare our children and our grandchildren a similar fate. ’ 1 5. for the success of the european project, however, the knowledge that ‘ for the civilization to which we belong, [ political union is ] the only way to avoid losing the thread that was broken by two world wars and retied by those with the vision to imagine europe as a community ’ 2 is only a necessary, not a sufficient condition. what is also needed is ‘ the creation of institutions that are appropriate for the new size of the european union, which allow us to face up to our responsibilities towards european citizens ’. 3 6. allow me to underline the previous sentence, which is taken from a speech in 2002, when ciampi was called on to give

… ] to defeat it, i had called for a series of structural and behavioural changes, a kind of monetary constitution, indicating three pillars ’. the first two pillars were incomes policies and new rules and strict constraints on public expenditure ; the third was the ‘ full autonomy of the bank of italy to prevent any interference in the creation of money by government expenditure centres ’. 11 17. when he outlined his government programme on 7 july 1981, spadolini said nothing about the third pillar, but he ‘ de facto approved the new arrangements for financial transactions between the treasury and the bank of italy, which andreatta, already treasury minister in the previous government, had agreed with me in april 1981 and which took effect in july that same year. this ended the bank of italy ’ s obligation to purchase treasury bills not sold at auctions. ’ 12 18. that ‘ divorce ’ marked the beginning of a process which would ultimately lead to the governor of the bank of italy being made responsible for setting official interest rates in 1992 and to the end of the treasury ’ s permission to borrow up to 14 per cent of its budgetary expenses from the central bank in 1993, for a token interest rate. ‘ in this way ’, ciampi again recalls, ‘ the independence of the bank of italy was given full recognition ’. 13 19. to those who believed in those days that excessive attention was being paid to price stability, in his ‘ concluding remarks ’ in 1981 ciampi responded that in previous years high inflation had ‘ not only caused vast and unintended transfers of wealth and created the forms of inefficiency that are due to unpredictable and volatile relative prices ’ but had ‘ also changed the very essence of the currency by largely stripping it of its function as a store of value and leaving it only a humble role as a unit of account and medium of exchange. a complex trading economy cannot function without a unit of value that is reliable both in the present and with regard to the future. ’ 14 20. the return to monetary stability was a success. after reaching 21 per cent in 1980, inflation fell to 6 per cent in 1986 and to 3 per cent in the mid - 1990s. however, while ‘ ricordo di giovanni spadolini ’, in scritti nella nuova antologia, vol. 2, pp. 152 - 153. ‘ ricordo di giovanni spadolini ’, in scritti nella nuova antologia, vol. 2,