“I’m old now, but I will fight to the last of my energy his attempt to reconstruct the rhetoric of fascism.” This was stated by former Prime Minister Mario Monti concluding the dialogue with the leader of Futuro Nazionale Roberto Vannacci at the Teha forum in Cernobbio.
The question on the euro and the single market
«Are you aware that even a primordial application of your program would take Italy out of the European Union and the euro?». Monti asked Vannacci during a panel featuring Monti and Vannacci themselves. With the National Future program the country “would slip away from the essential rules that govern both things and, in particular, the single market”.
«Populists and nationalists against the interest of the people»
“It is my belief that populists and nationalists in most cases go against the interests of the people and the nation they think they are defending”, states the former Prime Minister. «I love Italy very much – explains the professor – and I have tried to do it as best I can, also making personal sacrifices like when I asked the country to make sacrifices, but like Camus ‘I love my country too much to be nationalist’».
“This – she underlines – is exactly my position and the things you don’t remember that happened between 1950 and 1992, which brought about the end of the war between the EU states, happened because nationalisms for a moment declined.”
The memory of Mitterrand
«In January 1995, on my first day in the European Parliament where you now sit – says Monti – the last words of Mitterrand, who died shortly thereafter, were ‘le nationalisme, c’est la guerre’”, nationalism is war.
Vannacci’s reply
The leader of Futuro Nazionale claimed a different position on European architecture. «Unanimity in the European Union is not a pathology but it is a guarantee», said Vannacci, maintaining that there is a «need for change» because «there is always this inertia in changing the structure». To those who ask for more Europe, he added, “I say a different Europe, not the one we have now”.