It must be the third or fourth time that I am having dinner with this particular group of young Romans, who have so kindly reinvited me to a flat in Trastevere. If you subtract the fact that Vatican City lies in the northern end of this district, Trastevere’s population is mainly studentesque, slightly alternative, and – similar to the ‘nouveaux chiques’ of New York’s Brooklyn and Berlin’s Prenzlauerberg – well-off enough to pay the surging prices. Despite or because of these side-facts about his neighbourhood, the host, Carlo, frequently marvels a colourful selection of all sorts with his extraordinary cooking skills. I could not imagine a better setting for a *Euroskopian trial discussion. And really, after some wine and after mentioning my intention of travelling Europe for *Euroskop, the discussion about Italy, Europe and our generation unfolds, bouncing back and forth from Italy’s newest developments to European economic and identity crises.
The first argument raised by Andrea, a rather conservative economics student, tackles Mario Monti’s strangely legitimated rule of Europe’s scandal-battered but greatest nation, Italy. Andrea complains about the lack of support for and ongoing sciopperos (strikes) against Monti’s so desperately needed reforms. Why would people demonstrate against a technocratic government finally fixing those problems that politicians sewed, bred over decades and then failed to cut down? — Carlo is the first to answer. He recaps that the pressure driving out Berlusconi was a conglomerate of dawning European intervention, disillusioned followers and an ‘indignated’ civilian opposition. But numbers were still in favour of Berlusconi’s political party, and, once he was gone and elections were once more on the political agenda, diffidence, owed favours and ideological breaches again conquered the political parquet.
From a low-volume conversation in one corner I somehow detract the news that Carlo is celebrating the handing-in of his Bachelor thesis in philosophy today, which motivates me, after congratulating him, to ask a question touching political theory. Would he admit, I inquire, that democratic legitimation is stretched to its extremes once a president almost randomly entitles a warden to rule, even if only temporarily, while the legitimating body, the people, take no share in this decision? Carlos answer is unambiguous: The Italian people elect the Italian Parliament, Parliament elects the Italian president and, under certain unlikely conditions, the president is entitled to name an interim-premier, who then on his or her side proposes a cabinet to the president. Legitimation follows a clear route – in the present case from the people over parliament and Giorgio Napolitano to Mario Monti and his 18 ministers. — His answer leaves me not without the rare taste of longing for the utopian straightforwardness of a Swiss-style direct democracy.
Costanza, who enters the conversation at this point and who might have felt my uneasiness, follows a different sort of argument: She claims that the interim-rule by an outsider is an age-old, even antique mechanism ensuring the functioning of the state in times of dire straits. Nothing else, she claims, is Monti’s objective as he cuts down politicians’ wages and tightens the social net. — As the discussion drifts into opinions about the effectiveness of Monti’s reforms and the destructive power of the unions, I try to inquire more generally about him, the technocrat. Where does this nickname come from, anyways?
Andrea sketches a rough picture of a disciplined and modest man, a professor for economics at a prime business-school in Milano, who once worked as an advisor to institutions as different as the European Union and Goldman Sachs. The last time I heard somebody recite Monti’s life, I was with a very different tone and in very different circumstances. I was standing in front of Berlusconi’s apartment in central Rome – which is still a point of reference for civil upheaval – in the middle of a group of chanting student protestors. Somehow business school and Goldman Sachs did not sound so appealing to this crowd wrapped in Italian flags. And, not astonishingly, EU didn’t either. For them, these institutions stand for the system, the establishment, and thus ultimately for the powerful elite, which butchered it all. — By now Andrea, too, is ranting and raving at the politicians, which leaves me enough time to wonder once more what, apart from the countermovement, unites Italy’s, let alone Europe’s young generation?
Due to the complexity of the problem (and maybe the fourth glass of wine I quaffed) my brain fails to find an answer right away, but knowing that *Euroskop will soon set its sails to propose answers to this and other connected issues, I lay back in my chair and enjoy what I like most about Europe: the wine, the people and the discussions.
