the invitation to good will to stop the escalation and the risks of lack of communication – Corriere.it

In the atmosphere full of suspicions in which Italian politics floats (neglecting the hatred brewing throughout the week between Rome and Paris), for several hours yesterday there was a debate about who picked up the phone first between Emmanuel Macron and Sergio Mattarella. As if to imply that whoever called the other places himself in a dimension of surrender and defeat. He would be the loser of the showdown. A low-profile logic devoid of any significance, for the Quirinale.

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Where do you prefer to remember that the relationship between the two heads of state of that estimate and mutual friendship that are often felt, for any type of problem, bilateral or European, in a now consolidated practice of informal consultation. So it happened this time too, with a contact developed by agreeing on times and methods right in the height of tension, give him entourage of presidents. That is, by their respective ambassadors and advisers.

An interview that took place on Saturday evening, at the end of which it was drawn up the note made public yesterday morning simultaneously by the Elysee and the Colle, so that it could clearing a field of dialogue made particularly treacherous by latest controversy among the foreign ministers convened for the Brussels European Council at the same time. The text, wrapped up in an institutional language as it should be, can be summarized in a curt invitation to goodwill. To proceed together, within a European Union in which it makes no sense for Italy and France, both Mediterranean countries, to proceed divided before the EU on a very delicate and urgent issue such as that of migrants.

Exactly this Mattarella and Macron said to each other. Without our head of state thinking of Commissioner Palazzo ChigI entered into the merits of the technical choices to be made on the opening of ports, on NGO ships, on the management of landings and, above all, on the shared relocation of people.

Mattarella trusts that the chat can be useful both to our executive and to that beyond the Alps. Certainly to be convenient for both of them, provided they know how to treasure it. Wiping away certain rusts that had started to make relations between Rome and Paris screech again and changing the register of the respective declarations. Harsh and warlike tones on both sides, with the minister Matthew Salvinifollowed without too many distinctions by Giorgia Meloni, who claimed to have folded France and promised hard punch, as if he didn’t resign himself to being out of the electoral campaign, anxious to capitalize on new consensus. And with various representatives of the French government, as well as Macron himself, threatening not to open their borders to migrants who have landed in Italy, trying to involve others (starting from Germany) on this hard line and branding our premier as a big loser.

The risk of this escalation was to slip us and them into one incommunicability situation which would have impoverished an issue considered to be indifferent on the Hill. Mattarella had spoken about it prophetically in his recent Maastricht speech, played on concept of mutual trust, which is missing from this dossier. And he perhaps mentioned it again to Giorgia Meloni, on her weekend, informing her – after the fact – of her of his patient phone call.

Basically a replay of what we had seen in 2019when he strives for mend relations with the Elysium after the unfortunate trip to Paris of the 5 Star leaders, from the deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio to Alessandro Di Battistato parade alongside the most violent fringes of the Yellow vests. A move that had led to the withdrawal of the French ambassador from Rome…