One could still hear the echo of the applause with which the European Council had greeted Mario Draghi’s leave from the ECB presidency, when Giuseppe Conte asked to meet the man who with his “whatever it takes” had saved the euro and the Union from monetary and political default. The image of the heads of state and government who had sprung to their feet as a sign of gratitude to the outgoing European governor must have impressed the Italian Prime Minister, who yesterday said he had proposed him the role of head of the European Commission.
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Here is the detail that reveals the other reason why Draghi wanted to cut it short: having a consolidated experience of the dynamics of Brussels, he wanted to avoid his name ending up in the meat grinder of a negotiation with an almost obvious outcome. Because certain appointments, including the presidency of the Commission, have political value and revolve around the Franco-German axis that no one can scratch. And therefore there is a considerable difference between the IMF’s offer made in a “shared” way and the idea of a premier of irrelevant weight, launched without having been agreed.
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But there is another aspect of Conte’s narrative that struck: the insistence with which he wanted to highlight a physical and even psychological evaluation of his interlocutor, “who told me he was tired, wanted to rest, not to feel” . If the premier had not been in the middle of a public interview yesterday, one could suspect that this poisonous passage had been prepared in detail. And if the answer was needed by the premier to remove from himself the suspicion of fearing Draghi, in reality it fed it. Showing off a media technique that recalled D’Alema’s epic duels with Prodi.
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Like that passage that seems a defense of the former governor and that instead limits with derision: “When you invoke his name you pull him by the jacket”. The joke is worn out: for years it was used by those who nervously heard the noise of enemies approaching. It was usually accompanied by another sentence, which Conte did not spare himself. «I don’t see Draghi as a rival but as an excellence». Strange then that the premier did not include him among the hundreds of invitations to the glowing festival of the States General of Villa Madama.
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September 5, 2020 (change September 5, 2020 | 23:18)
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