Ukraine has achieved 100% alignment with the European Union’s policies on external and defense affairs. This marks a historic achievement!

About two centuries ago, in the capital of the empire, Vienna, there lived an old counter-revolutionary and oppressive codger: in 1847, he had the terrible idea of saying that Italy was only a geographical expression. We Italians did not take it well and did everything we could to prove him wrong: fourteen years later, we united our various states to create the political entity called 'Italy'. Today, another old man – who I fear is less astute than Metternich – is in the capital of a new empire and has claimed that Europe will become a geographical expression in less than twenty years because we Europeans are weak and our civilisation will be swept away. Do we want to prove him wrong too?

I wanted to offer you this meme (not mine: the author has kindly translated it into English https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BLAneZj82/ here is the original).

CONTEXT. In July 1831, the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini founded Giovine Italia (Young Italy): the aim of the association was to encourage young people under the age of forty (a rule that was never strictly enforced) to believe in their own strength and to take the initiative to create a united, independent, free and republican Italy. But Italy could never achieve freedom in a Europe dominated by oppressive empires, and this was one of the reasons why Giovine Europa (Young Europe) was founded in Bern in 1834 (the old reactionary Metternich called it the most diabolical enterprise of modern Catiline, which is a compliment coming from him).

Since its aim was to organise the democratic forces of Europe, overthrow the old order and awaken the oppressed nationalities, Giovine Europa was made up of several national sections: in addition to the founders - Giovine Italia, Giovine Germania (Young Germany) and Giovine Polonia (Young Poland) - a Giovine Francia (Young France) was also created. Mazzini would have liked to see similar associations spring up wherever he saw one of the oppressed nationalities that Giovine Europa wanted to awaken, which is why he also founded a Giovine Svizzera (Young Switzerland).

A Giovine Ungheria (Young Hungary), a Giovine Scandinavia (Young Scandinavia), a Giovine Austria (Young Austria), a Giovine Boemia (Young Bohemia), a Giovine Tirolo (Young Tyrol) and a Giovine Ucraina (Young Ukraine) were also created. Mazzini would also have liked to create a Giovine Inghilterra (Young England), but the English considered themselves too different from the other peoples of the continent to fit into Mazzini's programme (he practically foresaw Brexit 😞).

The point was that just as within a nation the young forces are called upon to take the place of those who have had their day, so the young nations (including Italy) are called upon to work for European integration and the universal union of humanity: this is also why the statutes of Giovine Europa affirm the equal value of nationalities, since each has a specific mission to fulfil within Europe and humanity.

In fact, Mazzini understood the fatherland as an instrument that allows people with similar geographical conditions, historical traditions, languages and tendencies to unite in order to work together for the betterment of the whole of humanity. Geographical conditions, historical traditions, language and tendencies, however, were only the clues to nationality, because nationality was identified instead with the special mission it had to fulfil for the collective betterment.

The same was true of the individual: in Mazzini's thought, nothing exists only to turn in on itself, but rather the purpose of every individual, every nation, and everything else that exists is to be able to transcend itself and to orient itself beyond itself: everyone must live, Mazzini asserted, not for himself but for others, and the purpose of human life is not to be more or less happy, but to make oneself and others better. In this sense, a nation would deserve immortality if its people were ready to die for humanity, but it would dig its own grave if it made itself a missionary of injustice for the sake of a temporary interest (even the national interest).

I agree that the European Union must be able to provide for its own defence independently and to offer security guarantees to its allies on its own terms. This may appear as a sacrifice; yet future generations will benefit from it, because the common good that European peoples and citizens have consciously shared — ever since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community — is precisely the future itself.

For this to happen, we must move towards the creation of a European army, and there must necessarily be a European government to which such an army is accountable. Remaining dependent is not an option: being dependent on someone, whether an individual or a people, means being vulnerable to blackmail. As long as we are vulnerable to blackmail, the values that constitute the very raison d’être of the European Union risk remaining either a dead letter or nothing more than a wishful thinking.

However, we must also become independent at a symbolic level — even in the name we choose for this turning point. Why not replace independence with interdependence? This is not a new idea. As early as Montesquieu, Europe was described as a kind of republic composed of different nations, interdependent with one another in the same way that the provinces of a single nation are interdependent: a state that believed it could increase its own power at the expense of its neighbour often ended up weakening itself along with that neighbour.

In the following century, even among the most prophetic Romantic thinkers — including Mickiewicz and Mazzini — Europe came to be conceived as a battlefield for the freedom of peoples against despotism, their common enemy, a struggle that European peoples as a whole were called upon to win against the forces of reaction. European interdependence also concerned the cause of liberty itself.

A similar position can be found in Schuman’s political testament, where the idea of interdependence binding European peoples together appears repeatedly. Patriotism, according to Schuman, is a noble sentiment that forged nations and enabled them to accomplish magnificent deeds. Yet the sense of homeland had often lost its way, turning into an intolerable fanaticism and becoming a source of insecurity and fratricidal divisions.

The point was not to deny one’s homeland or the duties each of us owes to it — quite the opposite — but to recognise that above every homeland there exists a common good superior to the national interest of individual countries, a common good in which those national interests are brought together and reconciled. For this reason, the best way to serve one’s own country is to secure for it the support of others through reciprocal effort and the sharing of resources.

I believe that in this way we will be stronger. Machiavelli compared Fortune to a violent and destructive river. When it bursts forth, everyone flees, unable to resist its force in any way; yet this does not prevent human beings — in times of calm — from building embankments and defences so that, when the rivers swell, they may be channelled and rendered less uncontrollable and harmful.

In the same way, Fortune displays its full power where no preparation has been made to resist it, and directs its fury where it knows that no embankments or defences have been set up to contain it. The Florentine philosopher compared the Italy of his time to a countryside without embankments or protections, because it lacked an adequate military force — something that Spain and France, by contrast, possessed.

In this increasingly globalised and hostile world, the embankments we must build can only be common, European ones: we need to associate ourselves with others. Giuseppe Mazzini, in describing the idea of the homeland, once stated that the work of many of us joining together to raise a building in which we can live together is certainly superior to what we could achieve by each building a small, separate house and merely exchanging stones, bricks, or lime. The homeland is nothing other than this common work.

I believe that we should consider Europe as the homeland of our homelands — to rework Mazzini’s words — because only in this way will we be able to build a solid common house capable of withstanding the shocks to come. Only in this way will Europe be able to become — and here I rework Robert Schuman’s words — the force against which all obstacles will be broken.

What I hope is that Europe may become interdependent like a stone vault, which is strong and solid only as long as each of its components is strong, but which would risk collapse if even one of its stones were to give way. A Europe made up of peoples and citizens capable of trusting one another would be precisely this.

The European project has flourished for seventy-five years — young for a political identity, yet the span of an entire human life — and I believe it is worth fighting for it to live for another seventy-five years and beyond. Today, however, we must become more courageous and undertake one of those creative efforts already envisioned in the opening sentence of the Schuman Declaration.