Monday, May 7, 2018

ENGLAND LEAVES, LONG LIVE ENGLISH: To French dismay, the tongue of Shakespeare and, um, Nigel Farage, is putting down deeper roots in the EU — and Brexit is partly to blame.

Speaking of which, check out the barbed historical exchange between the British and French ambassadors to Washington.

ITALY CONUNDRUM: It’s another big day in Italian and therefore European politics: Another “last chance” for parties to find common ground in yet another round of consultations held by the president of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. He has invited leaders of all parties and constitutional bodies to see him individually. Over the weekend, Italian politicians (and the media) went through all the potential coalition scenarios again just to conclude they’re still improbable or impossible. Expect a public message from the president tonight or Tuesday.

What now? One of the options is a government of experts under the leadership of an imagined superhero. Think a political figure who’s not siding with any particular party — a lawyer would be best — who is trusted across Europe, respected and possibly even known by Italians, close to but not a long-time friend of Mattarella himself, who would still need to find a majority in both chambers of parliament. Reality check: Superman and Superwoman unfortunately make appearances as rarely in Italy as anywhere else.

ITALY: IT’S OBVIOUSLY COMPLICATED

I spoke with Mario Monti over the day’s piatto unico at Bocconi University’s (he’s its president) professorial canteen. Pro tip: Anywhere in Italy, choosing the piatto unico saves you from mastering the art, or science, of combining the right antipasto, primo and secondo. We had swordfish and couscous with almond and pistachio, sparkling water and a sip of a crisp Sardinian white and caffè — doppio. Afterward, Monti attended a three-hour conference on artificial intelligence, and I went off to teach at another fine academic institution of the town I once called home — Milan’s Catholic University.

THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT: A so-called presidential government is a standard option in Italy’s playbook, and was last deployed in 2011 when Monti himself was asked by then-President Sergio Napolitano to lead a government to help the country avoid bankruptcy, which was looming on a not-so-distant horizon. Monti told Playbook why it won’t work this time: “The problem,” he said, is that “all the circumstances are different. At that time, it was not just after an election, but actually one and a half years before the end of the term. The incumbent government wasn’t able to keep the majority, because the League departed from [then Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi. The president did hold consultations and many parties were in favor of his idea about my name and no one proposed any other name.”

For Berlusconi, said Monti, an old-school gentleman, that meant “having somebody who was believed to be perhaps in a better situation than him taking care of the Italian financial situation. Berlusconi was not totally insensitive to the general interest in this respect. For the Democratic Party, it was the unhoped-for opportunity to have a prime minister of their own. More so, they would never have dreamt of seeing a non-bloody exit of Berlusconi from power. So this is why my confidence vote was the highest one in the whole history of the Italian Republic. Today, we see a different situation in all respects.”

Different sort of populists: Senatore, professore, have we found ourselves in a new era in Italian politics, or is it just the same old story reloaded? “Obviously it is particularly complicated, no question about that. It is probably a new stage because for the first time we have in Italy a majority of votes which went to parties that normally are called populists, or nationalists,” he said, referring to the League and the 5Star Movement.

He isn’t a big fan of either, coming from a Social Democratic background (or social democracy’s liberal wing) himself, but suggested that the League is lost for Europe while the 5Stars might be flexible enough to assume some responsibilities toward the EU. “The differentiation between the 5Star Movement and the League has been remarkable, particularly on issues which I believe are most interesting for those watching Italy from the outside, or from the markets, namely policies vis-à-vis the EU, financial and more broadly economic policies.”

5Stars, disciplined by power? “In my perception, the League is asserting itself more and more, particulary its leader Matteo Salvini, as a party with rather deeply felt strong opinions on the EU in particular. They were a bit moderated in tone, but are still there. Whereas the 5Stars, which probably are a much more diverse group of people in terms of electors and elected, have given to me at least the impression of being … more open to change, and that may come from persuasion, or pragmatic — sometimes maybe cynical, as in all parties — adjustment to events.”

New election a risk for Europe: “Very much under the influence of the president of the Republic, who is a solid and convinced pro-European, these potential tensions with the EU have not really come out during the immediately pre-election period and afterwards,” Monti said. “But … it seems to be the most probable scenario to have early elections in October. Then, six months after that will be the European elections. It would be in that case a continuum of electoral campaigns, and there I’m afraid the European issue would come back.”

Other options on the table: Aside from the president’s government, another option “is to go to elections under the current caretaker government of Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni,” Monti said. His caveat: “There would be the paradox of an extremely experienced prime minister, and several ministers as well, who certainly are capable of negotiating in Europe and have the knowledge of the personalities around the table and the techniques that are much greater than that of any potential other government coming up.”

Monti’s project: Extend Gentiloni’s contract. “The Gentiloni government, despite legally being fully legitimate, would be the expression of a parliament which is no longer there,” Monti said. That creates a problem for Italy at the EU’s negotiating table. Monti wants “to strengthen the status of Italy at those negotiations,” including on the EU’s budget, which would require “the re-establishment of a nexus between the new parliament with the old government that’s still there. That’s why I’ve been working and will go on with this on the idea, of a parliamentary motion or policy line to be agreed on hopefully by as many parties as possible on some key principles not just of adherence to European faith but also as a way to make Italy’s presence at the table a bit more incisive.”

Would that be a light version of a vote of confidence for a government that doesn’t have a majority (even if, as it seems, no one else has one), I asked. “No,” Monti answered. “If it is presented like that, it would fail. It would have to be presented as: ‘Look, new parliament, you must be very frustrated, you are there but you don’t have a possibility to give a line to the government. There is now this possibility, because then the Gentiloni government would have to take into account this line.”

GLIMMER OF HOPE? 5Stars leader Luigi Di Maio on Sunday for the first time said he would pick a prime minister with League leader Matteo Salvini. He previously insisted he should be the next PM. “If the goal is to put into action an election platform and the obstacle is Luigi Di Maio as premier, then I say let’s choose a prime minister together,” Di Maio said during an interview on RAI state television. More from Reuters.

ELSEWHERE

DID YOU KNOW? The EU has a chief spy. Though not one operational in intelligence-gathering. “We are not an EU secret service,” Gerhard Conrad told Welt am Sonntag’s Christoph Schiltz in a rare (by our account his first) interview as head of the EU’s Intelligence Analysis and Situation Center, or INTCEN. Still, the service’s offices are “in a secret place, behind thick, armored doors” (perhaps next door to yours?).

Conrad, a former top German intelligence official, has successfully negotiated more than one exchange of prisoners between Israel and both Hezbollah and Hamas. His team, about 1oo-strong, collects information from media and EU countries’ intelligence services (those willing to share) to pass on to the EU’s External Action Service, Commission and Council. The biggest threat, according to Conrad, are “new risks in cyberspace, hybrid threats as well as the increasing destabilization tendencies in [the EU’s] closer and the wider geographical environment.”

IT WAS A ‘COUP’: Inge Gräßle, a CDU MEP and trained journalist, wants to defend the free press against the way “journalists are treated by the Commission,” observed by her “avec inquiétude” in an op-ed for Libération published Saturday. In particular need of protection, she writes, are journalists who agree with her that Martin Selmayr’s blitz promotion to secretary-general was a “coup” — a line she repeats in the article, translated from German by Libération’s Jean Quatremer (who has led the charge against Selmayr from the press gallery).

IF WOMEN RULED: Nine women including Corinna Horst, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and president of the Brussels chapter of Women in International Security; Cinzia Alcidi, senior fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies; and Heather Grabbe, executive director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, call for new voices in the European conversation.

CITIZENS DIALOGUE: German Chancellor Angela Merkel starts her listening tour on what kind of EU people want this morning at a Berlin school. The European Movement Germany, which gathers employers, trade unions and NGOs with an interest in EU affairs, has some pieces of advice on how to (and how not to) conduct these debates, they told Playbook. Their statement includes some exclamation marks.

PUTIN TO BE SWORN IN TODAY. In related news, Cossack troops will “ensure public safety” at the World Cup.

BREXIT-PROOFING IRELAND’S DAIRY INDUSTRY: POLITICO’s Simon Marks visits Dairygold in East Ferry, Ireland, which is shifting production from cheddar (for British consumers) to Norwegian Jarlsberg cheese. But he finds the €77-million plan has drawn fierce objections from locals.

TRUMP MAKES MIDTERMS ABOUT SAVING HIS PRESIDENCY: Trump’s team is betting that Republican voters will turn out in November if they believe it’s the only way to save the president, report POLITICO’s Christopher Cadelago and Darren Samuelsohn.