What’s happened to Europe? Has it ever existed? In the beginning there was the euro and after that nothing has happened. If Europe is just a currency, in its absence Europe doesn’t even exist. Since 2008, the year of the crisis, in the European meetings they have discussed the public debt, the ‘spread’ for the different shares, held by the banks, default and a triple A rating. The European Banking Union has got substituted in people’s imagination with the actual European Union.
There’s no trace of a common foreign policy. The Mediterranean is in flames and Europe is as mute as ever in these situations. And yet what happens to Egypt, and more generally to North Africa, could lead to a new war for the Arab countries against Israel and an increase in the price of oil that cannot be sustained by the PIGS economies that are already on their knees. On the other side of the Atlantic, Obama has intervened, basically to get rid of Mubarak, while all Europe can do is to issue a communication to Trichet about the exposure of the European banks in relation to Egypt.
I have been to Brussels. I have seen the school children coming from different countries visiting the European Parliament. I had the impression that the youngsters were on a trip to a funfair, to a gigantic mausoleum inhabited by functionaries and euro-deputies, a ‘Club Med’, a cemetery for elephants that houses the residue of politics like Albertini and Occhetto or Mastella, the refugee from Ceppalonia. For others, it’s a trampoline towards the national parliament. What Union can we talk about if there’s no homogeneous fiscal system, common research and development, a shared policy on the flow of labour and of political refugees, a shared battle against the mafia?
Russia is represented by Putin, America by Obama China by Hu Jintao, but Europe? Who represents Europe? The first name that springs to mind for most people is Angela Merkel who has no European position. However the identification of Europe-Germany lies in the facts. Without Germany, this Europe held up by the German economy, would disappear. And yet it is getting wider, it is getting ever longer, like a blown-up balloon, we have got to 27 states, each of which in order to guarantee its future, has to run like Germany or risk losing national sovereignty, after monetary sovereignty, as is happening in Greece and Ireland. Italy, in this company, is playing the part of the one that signs up in principle to every directive about agriculture, commerce, environmental protection but then ignores them. Implacably, every year, we are getting hundreds of millions of euro in fines. We are Europe’s Tafazzi {masochistic comic character}. “If we are together, there’ll be a reason”. Perhaps we need to hurry up and find the reason before we get the order to "Break ranks".

P.S. Meetings for the creation of 5 Star Civic Lists have been organised in the following towns:
Alatri, Arezzo, Arquata Scrivia, Chioggia-Sottomarina, Chivasso, Codogno, Grezzana, Modugno, Nardò, Nerviano, Nettuno, Policoro, Rocca Priora, Salsomaggiore, San Giuliano Milanese, San Martino in Rio, Statte, Vigonovo
Suggest a meeting in your own town .