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Europe and China have signed a trade agreement defined as “historic”. It should reflect that photo that was posted to seal the deal. Represented in videoconference are Chinese President Xi Jinping, the President of the European Union, Ursula Von der Leyen, the current President of the EU, Angela Merkel, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, and French President Emmanuel Macron. Italy said it was irritated by the presence of the Elysee’s tenant. It’s not really understandable. And our country was right (if it did) in making the irritation known. But the legitimate question is how much Italian distraction is there in this whole thing?
Our country should not have been one of the partners China’s privileged? We signed (at the time of the government between Lega and M5S) an agreement on the Silk Road that alienated us from the sympathies of the United States and our European partners. And here we are left out the door on the day that China makes major commitments that affect much of our gross domestic product, manufacturing. Beijing is reportedly taking on obligations in the fields of electric car manufacturing, telecommunication equipment, healthcare, etc. Fields in which we have many interests, starting with the automotive sector, which represents for us between 5 and 7% of GDP.
It is no mystery that France aspires to take the latter position as a manufacturing country in Europe and even Italian. And the presence of Macron at the signing of the agreement is clear evidence of this. Are we sure that between Palazzo Chigi and La Farnesina there was the necessary attention to what was being discussed between China and Europe? Or was he immersed in a grueling rebound between majority divisions, divisions between majority and opposition? Once again the immaturity of our country’s politics emerges. A policy that fails to separate contingent issues from those that will have effects in the coming years.
The same debate on the next generation of the EU (which we remember sapproved in July 2020) comes up suddenly at the end of the year. And the suspicion is that it is more related to internal affairs than to a broader one. The spectacle we witness almost daily in Parliament is perhaps emblematic of the extent to which the majority and the opposition are able to divide on each issue without offering the country any scale of priorities. The fact that not even the proposal for a common photo of political leaders inviting the country’s population to get vaccinated can find a united majority and opposition (with laudable exceptions) says it all. There have been no voices from the opposition or even the majority that jointly invited Farnesina and Palazzo Chigi to closely follow the agreement that Corriere della Sera also anticipated on December 19. All we heard was that loud background noise of statements and counter-statements that definitely characterizes this ineffective legislature.
