Enrico Letta’s mission is against the grain. In a phase in which protectionism and nationalism are advancing throughout the European Union, and the sovereignist forces risk breaking through in the June elections, the report commissioned from the former prime minister by the Council must suggest how to relaunch the single market, one of the pillars of the construction community. But it is precisely for this reason that his document, now in its final draft, does not hide the critical issues: in its current and unfinished form – explains Letta – the single market is creating “rifts, dynamics of exclusion which have obvious political effects” in Europe. . And if the solution is certainly not a sovereign retreat, neither is inertia: the project of free movement of people, goods and services must be relaunched and straightened out, made truly “for everyone” says the president of the Delors Institute, anticipating a formula that will be at the center of the report he will present to EU leaders in two weeks. In the hope that the proposals it will contain, designed to be implementable in the horizon of the next legislature, will survive the political balances that will emerge from the vote and will not end up in some drawer in Brussels.
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A passepartout for small businesses
Letta starts from «a cry of alarm: we are paying the price of the last years of fears, for Brexit, Covid, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, which have led to a retreat towards the national dimension: in many fields the single market has gone backwards”. For example, public tenders, where the level of competition between European companies is decreasing. But the report will also point out two “splits”. The first, in a Union where there remain 27 different commercial and bankruptcy laws, 27 tax regimes and banking laws, is vertical: between medium and large companies with the resources to manage this complexity and the smaller ones, including startups, for which it is unassailable . «For them who operate on a local scale, the single market becomes a threat rather than an opportunity, because it means seeing medium and large companies competing», explains Letta. Hence the first of the concrete proposals that the report will put on the leaders’ table: to create “a 28th system alongside the 27 national ones, which companies will be able to opt for with the guarantee of operating in all countries without the need for adjustments”. A sort of legal “passepartout” which would be accompanied by a fiscal one: once the regime of a country is chosen, it would be valid throughout Europe.
Freedom to move, freedom to stay
The second split is horizontal, geographical, social and – again – with obvious political implications. «There is a dramatic issue on which we have been superficial – says Letta -: for years the freedom of movement of the single market has spoken to the most mobile and cosmopolitan part of society, but there is instead another part that wants to be reassured in the freedom to stay. Instead, these internal movements have led to depopulation and an impoverishment of essential services in many areas, such as Southern Italy for example.” In a theoretically united Europe, at least two Europes are diverging, a nucleus of rich and productive regions, around large cities such as Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Berlin and Amsterdam which attract capital and talent, and a periphery which remains behind. And the solution that the report will propose is in line with a principle of the noble father Jacques Delors, recently disappeared: there is no single market without convergence. “We need to understand how to help not only those who leave but also those who return, with a profound reform of cohesion policies.”
“The United States runs, Europe walks”
In the report, which recovers several ideas from the one written in 2010 by Mario Monti, Letta will indicate four specific sectors in which the integration of the European market must be immediately relaunched: telecommunications, energy, finance and defence. “They are the ones where there is more fragmentation and where Europe is doing worse: this is why the United States is running and we are walking.” This is the point at which his document is complementary to the one on competitiveness that he is preparing in parallel Mario Draghi and which will reiterate the need to allocate common resources in strategic sectors. And the point at which the geopolitical dimension in which the single market must be rethought is evident, “because everything changed after the attack on Ukraine and because Trump could return in November”. The question is whether this emphasis on security, with its almost automatic attribute of “national”, does not end up reinforcing protectionist and sovereignist messages. «There is a risk – admits Letta – but I am convinced that the principles underlying the single market can coexist with a doctrine of safety and protection». If there is a common thread in the relations that the two Italians are preparing, it will be precisely this: European countries can only be competitive and safe if united.
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Fewer directives, more regulations
The distance remains between the technical recipes and the political will of the 27 governments. Also because, if it is true that Letta’s proposals do not provide for changes to the treaties, the chancelleries are unlikely to like another recommendation from the report: «I regulations, immediately implementable, must become the main path of European standardization instead of directives, the transposition of which creates incredible fragmentation”. By prolonging the time, adjusting the commas of a regulation, countries manage to block or even distort unwelcome rules, only to then defend themselves from appeals and infringement procedures in endless disputes. «We need to ensure that states intervene only once in the decision-making process, in the ascending phase, eliminating interventions in the descending one». We ask Letta how the June vote will go, and how many of his proposals will remain acceptable if the sovereignist tide unbalances the balance of Europe towards the right. “We’ll see,” she replies. «But I have had hundreds of meetings and found in everyone the awareness that we cannot go on like this, that we need a more effective Europe that knows how to speak to everyone. Fragmentation is the death of Europe, inertia leads us to decline.”
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– 2024-04-04 11:25:03
