The Italian Job: Raffaele Fitto’s tasks as Italian Commissioner candidate

Raffaele Fitto has excelled in political consensus in many roles: from regional councillor to MEP. Before becoming a minister, he was elected president of Puglia with the centre-right coalition in the 2000 regional elections under the new majority law. Vast consensus was confirmed for a not short period.

It was the time of the ‘governors’, everyone was called that. Formigoni, and the others. The new model, pushed by newspapers and scholars.

They interviewed the Salento ‘boy’, the youngest of them all. And he, who has never smiled too much, immediately clarifies: ‘I am not Governor. I am President of the Region, as the law provides’.

Something that sounds banal, but it wasn’t and isn’t at all.
It describes the culture and education very clearly. Far from populism and sensationalist simplifications. It is no mystery, however, that the government, in nominating for the European Commission a person as well prepared and suited to the role as Minister Fitto, has equivocally marked two serious issues, that are exacerbating our country’s role within the European integration project.

Firstly, he explicitly spoke of ‘obtaining important delegations for Italy’, when both Art. 245 TFEU and Art. 17 TFEU establish an inescapable ‘obligation of independence’: that is, the members of the Commission must act with total independence in the exercise of their functions, they must neither solicit nor accept instructions from any external government, institution, body or organisation. This obligation ensures that Commissioners act in the general interest of the European Union rather than promoting national or partisan interests. ‘Così fan tutte’ is an opera, not a political line.

Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that Minister Fitto, if he is confirmed after the verification hearing before the parliamentary commissions responsible for the assumed delegations, will have to act in full consistency with the collegial choices of the European Commission, whose President (with the relative political programme) was not voted for by either the government or the majority of the political forces supporting him.

Good luck, therefore, to Raffaele Fitto, because he has a not easy task: to guarantee at the same time full loyalty to the European institutions and a silent political mediation for the nation. Raffaele Fitto has all the characteristics to perform these tasks in the best possible way, interpreting at best not only the role of ‘European commissioner of Italy’ but rather contributing as an Italian to give a specific weight today to the political project that we call United Europe, recovering that vision that was Alcide De Gasperi’s and that alone can guarantee the European Union to be a leading player in the theatre of peace and war in the world.

And, believe me, the world needs it badly.