November 26, 2021 - 7:00am
French president Emmanuel Macron will be in Rome today to sign an “enhanced cooperation treaty” — known as the Quirinale Treaty — between France and Italy. The problem is that, here in Italy, outside of Mario Draghi’s inner circle, no one knows the content of the treaty. That includes the Italian parliament, which will be called to rubber stamp the deal only after it’s been signed by the two leaders.
The whole thing is shrouded in the utmost secrecy. Indeed, most people weren’t even aware of the existence of such a deal until a few days ago. The little that we do know about the treaty is that Macron first suggested it in 2017, with talks starting in early 2018 with then-Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, the current EU economy commissioner. The deal was then put on stand-by following the creation, later that year, of Italy’s “populist” coalition government between the Five Star Movement and the League, which clashed with France over several issues, from immigration to Libya to the Five Star Movement’s expression of support for the French yellow vest movement, Macron’s arch-enemy.
It was then revived under the second Conte government before it was fast-tracked under former ECB president Mario Draghi at the helm of government, earlier this year.
Given the recent history of French-Italian relations, which haven’t exactly been on an equal footing, the clandestine nature of this deal is not surprising. It’s an open secret that France has historically exhibited a rather predatory attitude, in economic terms, towards its southern neighbour. In the past 15 years alone, French corporations have bought out around 350 Italian companies for a total value of almost 50 billion euros. These include household names in fashion, food and financial sectors such as Bulgari, Fendi, Gucci, BNL, Galbani, Invernizzi, Locatelli and many others.
France’s latest masterstroke has been the creation of Stellantis, born from the fusion of France’s Groupe PSA with Fiat Chrysler, which has effectively put the Italian carmaker under French management. More recently, tensions have emerged surrounding a possible sale of a part of Italy’s defence giant Leonardo to Franco-German consortium KNDS.
No wonder, then, that last year an Italian parliamentary committee for national security even warned against “a growing and planned presence of economic and financial operators of French origin in our economy”, which could result in industrial decisions against national interests.
Meanwhile, France’s establishment hasn’t been especially forthcoming when its own national heavyweights have been at stake: in 2017, when the Italian Fincantieri won the tenders for the majority of the French shipyard STX, Macron ripped up the tenders and temporarily nationalised the company to stop it from falling into Italian hands. This episode is revealing of the French establishment’s zeal in defending its national interest — a zeal that is all but absent in its Italian counterpart.
Italian politicians are not new to this kind of servile attitude towards France. That several of the most prominent members of the Democratic Party (PD) — including its current secretary, Enrico Letta — have been awarded the Legion of Honour, the highest French order of merit, is telling. Indeed, Letta — dubbed “the Frenchman” by his critics — also has (had) stakes in several French companies.
In light of the above, many people question what the consequences of the treaty for Italian industry will be. But even on other issues, such as foreign policy (take Libya) and immigration, the two countries’ interests have often been divergent, if not outright conflicting. It thus seems highly unlikely that the treaty will give rise to a new French-Italian axis capable of acting “in the common interest” of the two countries and maybe even rebalancing German hegemony in Europe, as some commentators have argued.
It appears much more likely, given the power relations between the two countries, that the treaty will simply serve to entrench Italy’s subsumption into France’s sphere of influence, and further erode what little sovereignty Italy has left. As Roberto Napoletano, former editor of the Italian business newspaper Sole 24 Ore, wrote in 2017: “In international circles, the prevailing political reasoning takes for granted that the French want to conquer the north of Italy and perhaps let the south become a large tent city for immigrants from all over the world”. There’s no reason to believe that has changed.
Update: the draft of the deal has now been published.
Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.
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Subscribe“other NATO operations around the globe”?
NATO was formed as a defensive alliance for Western Europe against the USSR. That was it’s sole purpose. It should never be involved in “operations around the globe”. That it has been is entirely wrong and a result of its actual purpose vanishing with the end of the Cold War when its bureaucracy sought a different reason to survive.
Europe will never be capable of its own defence until it grows some b*lls.
….and realises who its enemy is (Spoiler Alert: Russia).
‘Swedish Defence University?’ Now there’s the perfect definition of oxymoron. Mind you, Sweden did very well out of its close economic ties with Germany during WW2 so it does have form for looking after itself.
Hasn’t been doing too well looking after itself against crime just recently. Probably that’s where effort should be expended, not on a dying NATO.
What I find amazing is that they’re unironically calling themselves “the coalition of the willing”, either thinking most people are too stupid to remember what a disaster the last “coalition of the willing” led to, or being too stupid themselves to think of something original (and not associated with a fairly recent western foreign policy debacle).
Article 5 bears reading carefully. While NATO Secretaries-General like to trumpet the phrase “an attack on one is an attack on all”, they are much more reluctant to spell out the consequence: According to Article 5, each NATO member then autonomously decides the scope of its reaction. It may well deem a démarche (with exceptionally strong wording) to be appropriate.
Yes, Europe needs a new architecture for its defence – even if the label is “NATO”, it will have to be something completely re-thought from first principles. And the key principle will have to be defence, something current NATO has sloughed off.
The US’ current role in NATO is so crucial that there is no NATO without the US, which of course was always deliberate. The US brings not only the nuclear shield, but also intelligence, the command-and-control structures, and probably most importantly the undisputed leadership that precludes squabbles among the Europeans. Without the US, who will take that leadership role? France? Germany? The UK? A council? Even just asking the question shouts out the problem.
First and foremost, the defence architecture must not be linked to the EU, for the sake of everyone.
“According to the Financial Times, Europe’s biggest military powers and the Nordic states are discussing a plan to “replace the US in Nato”, with a view to guaranteeing the continent’s security”
….but they can’t even secure their borders.
Personally I’m finding it quite tedious having military defence and border control/immigration conflated all the time. The two things are not at all related.
Really? The inability to control borders most certainly calls into question the competence of those who are now proposing to involve their countries in expanding their militaries and getting involved in a “peacekeeper” role in Ukraine.
Peacekeeping can quickly become “hot” and I for one have no faith in any of the leaders to handle the situation.
You could say their inability to run the economy calls into question their competence, or the rise in shoplifting, or how well they can cook.
Migration is too high. This does not say anything about replacing the US in NATO.
The keyword is “border”. They are proposing to police someone else’s but cannot do so for ours.
Replacing the US in NATO, as the OP was talking about, involves buying weapons, boosting the size of the military etc.
Reducing immigration requires processes to prevent/deport illegal migrants, enacting policies to reduce legal migration etc
They are not the same, and people putting them together are just parroting something they’ve heard elsewhere.
What’s the point of national defence if your borders are open?
There will soon be no nation to defend.
Not “can’t”
Won’t.
After reading this article, I’m at a loss what the author is proposing. What is a more native NATO? How would this be practically implemented? It all seems so abstract when the real world is anything but abstract and needs to be dealt with in a concrete way.
One thinks of Turkey, not mentioned here.
I’m still unclear, as an American, as to what NATO is supposed to do any more? Russia is not the Soviet Union in scale or capability. Europe has 3 times larger economy and population than Russia. The EU together spends as much or more on defence than Russia with capacity to spend more on defence. France and the UK have nukes so what is NATO’s purpose at this stage?
The Russians are still “the Enemy”. That isn’t going to change any time soon.
A millennium of violent European history prior to Pax Americana casts a long shadow of doubt on the success of a NATO sans the U.S. All of the many divisive elements–economic, cultural, and political–that continue to plague Europe will soon escalate to more profound significance absent the heavy hand of American hegemony.
Consider the historic European experience of conflict deriving from simply the division of Christianity into Catholic and Protestant and then add to that the two additional modern polarities of Secularism and Islam. The adversarial nature of the current milieu will lose its latency when all the separate European nations and factions within them are left to their own devices.
Pure fantasy. There are only three countries in the world that can actually affect change. They are the U.S. China, and to a lesser extent Russia. Germany, up to 2010, could make that list but they are a broken country. France has always wanted to have that capability but has never had the capacity. England is also out for the same reason.
The EU is nothing but a bureaucrat’s wet dream. It has no purpose except to further their careers. They are amoral, occasionally immoral, and wouldn’t risk a broken fingernail to actually do the right thing. There will be a lot of eloquent soliloquies but no real action. As always. But they will still be building their careers and wealth.
Europe has no guts. It won’t do a damn thing for the Ukrainians.
If that it true, then it will need to accept continual Russian invasions of its borders.
Only complete utter morons argue that Russia is a threat to Western Europe. Not only are they morons but they have the moral compass of a rabid sewer rat.
“The only way, arguably, to keep the Americans in Europe”
Why would we want this?
Watching NATO die is not, I suppose, a very edifying business but what we are currently witnessing (I’ve seen it described as a “coalition of the killing”) is rather pathetic.
The Cold War is over. It’s become obvious that Russia (or China) has no wish or capability of invading the West. The West should turn its efforts to friendly trade with the East, and minimize effort wasted on weapons.
Ukraine is “the West”. Russia has invaded it.
Russia IS a threat to all members. The sooner they all realise it, the better.
What is happening is the return to the default condition of Europe in which nations decide what is best for them. The EU like the earlier UN and League of Nation talking shops is doomed to splinter apart. People reject supranational organizations in principle on the reasonable grounds they are unnatural. Tribalism is deep in our DNA.