farewell to politics and “armchairs” – Corriere.it

Lto temptation to blame others irresistible. In some ways Mario Draghi not surprised. He had taken this into account well before he left the presidency of the Council a year ago, but already from the moment he received the task of forming the government from Sergio Mattarella in February 2021. In those days, in fact, he did not let himself be ensnared by the good wishes and flattery he received, and took refuge behind one of his jokes: Even the new collaborators are talked about very well in the first week. Then…. Then even those who waved the Draghi agenda like a banner forgot about it. Imagine therefore if he was taken aback by the criticisms of the Pnrr and even of the superbonus. Questions that he, moreover, had inherited and on which instead of playing blame he had tried to patch up. They weren’t the only ones.

However the Draghi cabinet was the government of the crisis. The pandemic was underway when he entered Palazzo Chigi, and was tackled by developing a vaccination campaign from scratch. The beginnings were not simple: the doses were missing and the premier – annoyed by the behavior of his European partners – began to insistently call his powerful friends at the top of American pharmaceutical multinationals to help him. They must feel stalked, he confided one day to a minister: They no longer answer me. Finally they answered and the anti-Covid plan proved successful, subtracted as it was from political dynamics which aimed to transform any opening or closing decision into an ideological dispute.

The war crisis, on the other hand, was not foreseen. Also because the European secret services repeated right up to the last minute that Vladimir Putin would not attack Ukraine. The morning after the invasion, the prime minister expressed his disappointment: We learned about it from the media. Without mentioning it again, he convened the Committee for the Security of the Republic and staged a dramatic confrontation between those who pushed for immediate positioning alongside Kiev and those who pointed out that 45% of Italy depended on Russian energy sources. Draghi took a few days to reflect, then went to Parliament and said: We cannot look the other way.

After the initial misunderstandings, he was the most important supporter of Volodymyr Zelensky in the EU. It was he who convinced Paris and Berlin, who resisted the idea of ​​letting Kiev into Europe. Convinced that it was the right path, he organized the famous train journey with Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, and on the way to Ukraine he let them push towards this solution. Use the del method soft power on many occasions, even on the price cap, so opposed in Brussels as it is useful for lowering the price of gas. In the meantime elaborated the national plan to get out of energy dependence on Moscow and he carried out the agreement on the regasification terminals despite the opposition of almost the entire Parliament.

Today the former ECB president travels the world for conferences. In the last — overseas estate — he reiterated the need for greater European integration, convinced as it is that the Europeans are asking for it now. Periodically pursued by rumors that give him from time to time close to taking office. One evening he wanted to get rid of the whim of cheating those who asked him to account: I just got on the plane to go and occupy the seat. The opinion polls took him out of the survey at the beginning of the year, when he was still high in the approval ratings and had I’ve already stopped dealing with politics because it’s good for your health. Yet he continues to meet his former ministers, those with whom you begin to give yourself after many months.

It took a long period of adjustment for them to understand each other. The initial approach was abrupt. After the first meeting he prevented the ritual of declarations: Today we will not communicate anything because we have done nothing. When we do something, we will communicate it. He, accustomed to the rooms in Frankfurt where everyone is educated to silence, as soon as he noticed the drafts filtering from the Council threatened the ministers to make him leave his cell phones outside the hall. In that multicolored cabinet, he tried to limit political discussions for obvious reasons. In some cases for cap of not being able to exempt. The duels with Dario Franceschini remain epic, with whom, however, he left well. In any case, the form was always safe. After the handover with Giuseppe Conte, for example, he told his collaborators that the meeting had been discreet: It was certainly not like the one between Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi.

It was the race for the Quirinale that upset the balance in government and it is not yet clear whether the crisis was a consensual divorce or, as Draghi said, an unexpected divorce. Certainly the premier’s path to Colle – however difficult because it was unprecedented – was made even more bumpy if possible when his executive was born, from those who worked for the formation of the team. None free from errors and not even Super Mario. He knew where to get his hands on the economy and in fact with the good debt he has allowed Italy to recover faster and stronger than that of the other European countries. But politics was something else and the politicians won the presidency of the Republic.

Now that coach Draghi has been replaced by a political premier, it is debated whether and to what extent Giorgia Meloni has taken up the inheritance received. From the handover to today, relations between the two have not been interrupted but have physiologically loosened up. A few weeks ago the controversies with the opposition on the Pnrr led the Prime Minister to support – in an interview with Courier — that my government is working on a plan written by others. The point is that Draghi had to intervene in extremis on the project drawn up by Conte and the changes he was able to make were limited because he could not disavow the grillini who were the relative majority party. Nor was it possible to change the figure requested by Italy from Europe and which Palazzo Chigi considered too high for the spending capacity of the national system.

On 21 July a year ago Draghi resigned and Mattarella dissolved the Chambers. These days, like every summer, the Roma fan wonders what his team will do in the league.

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