Interview to Mr. Gerard Collins, Vice-president of the European Parliament and President of the Ireland delegation of the FIAMA FALIL  

Mr. Collins, which are the reasons of this meeting, what do you intend to propose? 

It's for me a great pleasure being here at Milan. For two reasons: a political one and a personal one. The political reason is given by the fact that I've met some members of the European Parliament and that to develop the relationship with our groups. The personal reason is that both my wife and me expect to spend a beautiful evening at the Scala. But let's get back to the political topic. Recently - Alleanza Nazionale and our group of the Union for Europe - have got closer and I can say that our parliament members have come to an agreement.. That allows us to create a Centre-Right movement constituting an important political force within the European Parliament, interesting democracy. A stronger group to safeguard democracy, able to act political control (as it is already doing) and in many cases expressing its own thesis. I think it's the moment for Centre and Centre-Right to get joint and make it feel their presence, so to act all their influence over the decisional processes of the European Parliament. This is important, since the powers the parliament has reached with the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. 

Europe is to be built at all, which are the proposals of your party?  

When we talk about building Europe we must not forget that the Europe soul is its people; our wish is that to create a Europe centred on persons and their concrete problems, a Europe founded on morals principles where the Centre-Right programs are realised. It is the common principles that give us a role in configuring the future of our countries also at an European extent.  

As regards to the current economic situation, which are the perspectives?  

Current times are economically critics for the European Union, since it has been constituted few time ago. By the moment, Europe is as a little ship in the middle of a storm. Nevertheless we do not think that we will be affected by any consequence, and we will launch our ambitious European project. All that can create tension and troubles in the economic field, but we must focus the motivations inspiring the founding fathers of Europe. The greatest were Alcide De Gasperi and Adenauer. They used to say that we must be guided mainly by the need of building an Europe so to warrant everybody welfare and freedom.. Over these ideas we must work and we want to, to better our citizen's life. 

So do you see a positive situation?  

When we look back to the last forty years we can be proud of the cohesion realised in this continent; now we must defend also steadiness from the East. We must catch at the same time the challenge of expansion, and pay attention not to mine the harmony and the welfare of the already existing Union. The integration of our neighbourhoods of the East must be planned, what we have to offer to the new democratic states goes beyond the material aspects. We try to build a democracy founded over the human respect, over the freedom principles, human dignity and human rights respect even in a juridical field. 

What is the political line your party thinks to give to the Europe Union formation?  

In offering the possibility to belong to the European union to whom requires it, we have already contributed to realize in that countries a democratisation process controlling that it is carried out in a pacific way. Technical assistance, supplied by a series of programs, develops a basic role. Europe wants to keep his human face and it is basic to reach concrete results, create the required conditions to better life quality of ours citizens.  

So what's the mission of your party?  

We who belongs to the Centre-Right must give this kind of leadership to our citizens. De Gasperi was used to classify politicians as “prey men “ while we want to be remembered as men and women of convictions, we do not want to be passive administrators, we want to realize Europe just with our soul.  Interview to the Honourable Mr. Raul Rosado Fernandes,  president of the Portuguese delegation of the Social Democratic centre-popular party 

Honourable Mr. Raul Rosado Fernandes, which is your party's position in the European Union? 

I'm here to support the defence of those principles that offer us the possibility to meet and at the same time to propose measures and behaviours that may help Europe to have a soul, and not only the single currency. 

It's an interesting and plenty of meanings concept but difficult to realize the way things are now. How do you think to realize it? 

If we examine the European history since its Greek -Latin origins and then the Judaic -Christian ones, the idea regarding principles going beyond the simple matter has always be present in the European thought, that does not means that it did not coexist at the same time an Europe producing goods and featured by trade spirit. Along centuries it followed one another alternating times featured by peace and great creative potentialities periods and violent fights periods, due to economical reasons, religious ones or for the hegemony over territory. Nevertheless in the middle of so much pain we have always felt, even if in an intangible way, that it kept the recurring theme constituted by the doctrines from which our civilisation comes from.From the Virgilian Virtus and his Pietas, from the definition of the rules of the political play, from the powers separation we find the experience and the attention in trade production to keep an open society, and to preserve freedom, standing the respect toward others.  

Are you talking about individual freedom? 

It's a basic idea. A Karl Popper's work, published in 1947, after the war, “The open society and its enemies “, written in English, has been kept secret for a long time and it haven't been translated into the different European languages. Premeditatedly it has not been neither introduced in schools nor talked about by press. Why? Because it was against the totalitarian state, against the thought guided by state and it was in favour of making responsible and deliberation by individuals. By then we lived in the Manichean epoch of the cold war. On a side the totalitarian state, the economic centralism, the internal passport, the following one another of the innocents' purges, to ensure the needed terror, to keep the omnipresence of the state. So you want to say that situations already occurred in the past go on occurring again.  

Yes, on the side of the free word, the fifth Stalinist column, Maoist, Castroist etc. has always been respected and kept in the national parliaments. Since they had fought and won together the war we must by force keep balances, but all that has created a misbalance in the thought and the political behaviour of the European countries, such to create a guilty feeling, mainly in the centre-right regime, that nevertheless has given a remarkable contribution to avoid further degeneration. Following, with the fall of the wall of Berlin, the Left with remarkable perfect timing, not to be set apart, has rapidly self recycled and miraculously converted itself to the free-trader Word accepting the market notion. Almost all of us were sure that with the euphoria provoked by the fall of the Evil Empire, as Reagan called it, it would be lived a real golden age, mainly after more than fifty years of peace and welfare in the west world, while in the countries beyond the Iron Curtain they lived in a condition of complete withdrawal. This change, fast occurred, had had on the opposite side a positive evolution. Why? Because it has been abandoned as reference points those values inspiring the real principles, hoping to realise the ideal state by the means of welfare. 

That you are saying, does it mean that we are passing through a real process of moral, historical and political decline? 

If we want to characterize this process, we cannot avoid speaking of decline, since we risk to replace the prime principles that since ever have oriented populations along the most peaceful periods of history, with the ephemeral values we have exchange our souls with. When we see the European population despising their own cultural tradition, its erudition, its classics, submitting itself to a mental annulment in front of television screens, we understand that, as Aristotle said, it's the moment to say “Ananke stenai” (we must stop), look at what we are, what we do, where we are going to. Maybe, will the world be only a market? Will competition and commercial war or academic war be the unique form of life? It is to admit everything without establishing limits to the human decline? The conceptual difference between the good and the evil is disappearing just due to the great welfare and the great poverty. 

Isn't it a too pessimistic vision? 

The idea of the sacrifice has been deserved to the outcast of our society and to the less developed societies. The famine in a growing world is a problem that does not involve us, or we find numerous justifications to withdraw ourselves from building a relationship with the continents penalised by the lack of instruction, compelled to live in a endemic misery condition, foreboding civil wars. In fact we need a soul not to say I feel your pain, as Mr. Clinton does, but to attempt finding in the society surrounding us the possibility to realize a project tending to limit the malaise condition and the restlessness. 

What do you propose to surmount those difficulties and to better the economic situation? 

The economical globalisation without rules must be replaced by the globalisation ethics oriented, by the moral force not excluding the physical force, only then we will be sure to have given Europe a soul, and we will be able to live with more serenity along with the other nations even if they have different origins.   Interview to Mrs.Cristiana Muscardini, President of the A.N. delegation at the European Parliament  

Which is your position as regard to the European economic policy? 

Since some time many voices have arisen to denounce the incongruity of the single currency that develops a first level political role, being absent at the same time community political institutions. “It must not be the bankers - it is said simply - to decide the European policy “. Really the central bankers decide the monetary policy, but the denounce is useful to remember that, without the political union, the single currency has a role that it is not of its competence. At the times we made those assertions publicly in the Parliament at Strasbourg, the accusation directed to our party was that AN was choosing the forward flight since it was against Europe. Finally now the entire Italian political world, or almost all, repeats our assertions and nobody dares to accuse of anti- Europeanism those who invoke the political union as a counterweight of the single currency. Really everybody is becoming aware of that, without the political institutions, Europe can not count within international business correspondingly to its trade supremacy. Foreign and security policies are its Achille's heel, that may not be amended with a free-trade zone, as far as important it is.  

So a political union, but which is the function the European Parliament must have?  

Our project about Europe is not linked to an ephemeral dream, but it is rooted in those values. Before going on, I wish to clarify the meaning of 'values', nowadays too much inflated and often understood improperly as a synonymous of principle that is another matter at all. Indeed, the “Devoto-Oli” dictionary says as follows: “Conceptual motive over which it is founded a doctrine, a science, a thinking “. We refer to those principle that have been for all these years our reference point and that have helped us to fill the minor quantitative difference of our political presence, and to wide our horizons so determining our choices beyond the simple tactical alliances. Coherently with other parties of nations belonging to the EU we do not want a mere political alliance, but a deeper linkage founded over the reciprocal estimation and friendship. The political agreements can vanish, but when there are estimation, respect and agreement about principles then alliances cannot vanish and can strengthen with time.  

Many changes are in act in Europe. Which will be your choices? 

Among the topics that are changing Europe there's the recent reunification of Germany, planting great problems. In fact there are great difficulties in re-balancing the underdeveloped zones, where communist countries dictatorship was in force, and those richer of the West Germany. To reach this target, good feelings are not enough; wide-ranging ideas and projects are required. Policies that can understand and rule the world economy and market globalisation. So it is indispensable to pay attention to the agreements taken at Maastricht, so that the politics can do its role giving a solution to problems, sometimes making compatible exigencies apparently contrasting.  

Concretely, how these assertions can bee put into practice?  

Citizens feel - as we feel- that in the economy extent the defence of one's own entrepreneurial and artisan specificity is the system apt to keep alive the market, to guide the globalization without involving the standardisation of products, this phenomenon involves inevitably new unemployment and new poverty. Homologation, standardisation: are terms cleaning up all the abilities. We deal with the topic of the “principles” to give a soul to this Europe, so strictly monetary, to cast the single national cultures and to strengthen them by the means of the unification of politics. Safeguarding and developing the cultures related to the human life, the work promotion, the safeguard of dignity, the respect of the family, fight against poverty and marginalization. The Europe's soul must be the synthesis of these values and the expression of a vision of the world that takes into account the deepest requirements. The Europe of the citizens is also that but not only the juridical acknowledgement of a belonging. It's the respect of the culture and traditions of one's own country, it is a science investigation favouring the bettering of life conditions and respecting at the same time the human being dignity, is the promotion of respect, of the freedom of people within the frame of the collective freedom. Ours is a Europe that must not turn into a mere trade space or monetary zone.