Enrico Letta: "If the extreme right wins in Italy, there will be contagion in Europe"

The Italian electoral campaign holds few mysteries at this point.

And that has just begun.

The right-wing coalition, made up of the League, Brothers of Italy and Forza Italia, is practically assured of victory.

The only possibility that this is not the case is that the Democratic Party (PD) and the small coalition that has formed and is led by former Prime Minister Enrico Letta (Pisa, 56 years old) manages to add more votes and can put the president in a bind of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, when commissioning the formation of a government to the right.

From that idea, Letta is managing to polarize the battle: either he or Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy.

The secretary of the Social Democrats returned a year and a half ago from Paris, where he was Dean of International Affairs at the prestigious Sciences Po and President of the Jacques Delors Institute.

During this time he has managed to rebuild the party, rejuvenate it and weave old alliances that time —and Matteo Renzi— had liquidated.

But the fall of Mario Draghi's government, of which his party was a part, has come sooner than expected.

There has been no time to reach better agreements with its potential partners and, above all, to reform an electoral law that will greatly harm parties that are not part of a grand coalition like the one the right has put together.

Letta received EL PAÍS last Thursday at the headquarters of his party in the center of Rome.

Ask.

Are the elections on September 25 a plebiscite between you and Giorgia Meloni?

Response.

They are actually a battle between two very different ideas of Italy.

A European Italy before a nationalist Europe.

An Italy of rights against one that advocates Viktor Orbán's idea of ​​family in Hungary.

Or one against climate change and another that votes against all European regulations on the environment.

P.

Also that of those who declare themselves heirs of Draghi against those who made him fall?

R.

Yes. The right saw Draghi as a necessary evil.

But as soon as they could, they got rid of it.

For us it was a fundamental point of reference.

Now it is necessary to transform the program that began in this year and a half of government into a political design.

P.

Is your program, then, based on the Draghi Executive program?

R.

Yes, but expanding it.

His work was limited by the coalition perimeter.

In rights, for example, he could not do anything because the League prevented it.

P.

If you obtained more votes than Meloni, would you consider yourself entitled to obtain from the President of the Republic the task of forming a government?

A.

It depends on the result.

But if our coalition went well and we were ahead, yes.

The electoral law gives strength and weight to coalitions.

And they have made an alliance that is ahead of them, but it is an alliance between very different parties.

I think your society will not work after the elections.

P.

But you preferred not to ally yourself with the 5 Star Movement, and that will almost definitely penalize you with this electoral law.

Why?

R.

The reasons were two.

They brought down the Draghi government.

And furthermore, in international politics there is a great separation on the issue of Russia and Ukraine.

It has been impossible to look the other way.

P.

Could you look the other way after the elections in case it was necessary to agree?

R.

We will see what happens after the elections.

Now we have to face the elections.

But this electoral law is very radical and will give a binary result: they win or we win.

The third forces will not count, but we will talk the day after the vote.

Enrico Letta, secretary of the PD and former prime minister, during the interview.Antonello Nusca

Q.

How much do you bet on the undecided for this victory?

A.

A lot.

When I read that 40% of the voters do not want to vote or do not know what to vote for, for me it is a great hope.

It means that there is an important work space.

I have a lot of hope in the undecided and in the young vote to win "

P.

Many of them are young, traditional voters of the left.

They must have done something wrong.

R.

But we are still the number one party, the favorite among young people between 18 and 24 years old.

And after a year and a half of work, it is the greatest satisfaction I have.

I hope to convince you to vote and vote for us.

P.

Are Meloni and Matteo Salvini, from the League, the extreme right?

R.

Yes. They are two political leaders who in Europe have a relationship with Orbán, with the Polish PIS, with Vox and with Marine Le Pen.

Those are your interlocutors.

They are united by three things.

The denial of climate change, and in that they are like Donald Trump;

their opposition to integrated and communitarian Europe, because they are in favor of the right of veto, which Orbán uses more than anyone else, and we have the opposite idea: that decisions be made together and the right of veto be eliminated.

And in terms of rights, look, they are united by an idea that Salvini has clearly expressed: Orbán's Hungarian family model.

So yes, that's far right.

Q.

Why is there no cordon sanitaire in Italy?

R.

It is the responsibility of the Italian party affiliated with the European People's Party (EPP), which has decided to completely surrender and place itself under the protective wing of the extreme right.

It is as if the PP in Spain said that its leader is Santiago Abascal and that they support him.

Forza Italia's decision is very serious.

But also to make Draghi fall, a choice contradictory to his nature.

Q.

Did you expect Silvio Berlusconi to react like this?

R.

No, I thought I would have some dignity.

But he has completely surrendered to the extreme right.

P.

What did you think that Manfred Weber, president of the EPP, came to Rome the other day to bless the coalition with the extreme right?

A.

It's amazing.

And it is very worrying for Spain.

It means that after Meloni the doors of the PPE will be open for Vox.

It was incredible that Weber legitimized the coalition of an EPP affiliate Meloni and Salvini.

In Italy he has placed himself under the protective wing of the extreme right”

Q.

Could Meloni's arrival at the Chigi Palace be a danger to Italian democracy?

R.

Italian democracy is solid, I do not fear for it.

But it is a danger for the future of Italy and the future of Europe.

This coalition is united by a nationalist and eurosceptic idea.

Q.

It is customary to accuse the Brothers of Italy of a lack of leadership.

However, four of the major party candidates, starting with you (Renzi, Berlusconi, Giuseppe Conte), have already been prime ministers.

And Salvini was already deputy prime minister of the government.

In the end it seems that the only thing new is her.

R.

The last center-right Executive that existed in Italy, chaired by Berlusconi, had Meloni as minister of youth policies.

And during that government, between 2008 and 2011, youth unemployment went from 21% to 31%.

Q.

Yes, but it happened during the worst financial crisis in 50 years.

R.

Yes, but they resigned, left and left the country bankrupt.

They have already been in government.

We Italians perhaps have a short memory.

P.

The left will also be partly to blame for what happens, don't you think?

R.

Yes, we did not understand the issue of precariousness and work.

I have put it at the center of our program, but five years ago, in the Renzi period, it was marginalized.

There were also internal divisions.

And furthermore, we have been in almost all the governments of the last decade, and that makes them see us as the party of the institutions.

Q.

Italy is facing a diabolical autumn.

What does it foresee?

R.

The central issue is the price of energy.

Spain transformed what was a limit into an opportunity: the Pyrenees.

The lack of interconnection and that the tube with France does not work, has been the fate of Spain because it has agreed to put the ceiling on the price.

Today energy costs a third of what it is in Italy.

We have to find a solution with the European ceiling and with national measures.

Otherwise, deindustrialization will be a fact.

Russia is strangling the economy of countries like Italy and Germany, the most industrialized in Europe.

P.

Meloni has said that international policy, especially in the case of the Ukrainian issue, will be the same as Draghi had.

Do you believe it?

R.

No. Meloni has been in line with Draghi on that issue, it must be recognized.

But Salvini and Berlusconi are friends of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and that will not change.

But the most disturbing thing is the line over Europe.

They will do everything to create the Europe of nationalisms.

And Europe and nationalism are like the sun and the moon: they cannot coexist.

P.

You have said that there has been Russian interference in the campaign.

Where have you seen them?

There has been Russian interference in the campaign and I fear that there will be more of a technological nature.

Salvini and Berlusconi are friends of Putin and that will not change

A.

The gas issue is a clear interference.

Putin has planned it to push Italian voters to think: "Let's give Ukraine to Russia and don't bother us with gas."

There is an evident design that today impacts against the Italian elections.

Then there have been other chapters, like the one about the recently detected Russian spy [she infiltrated a NATO department in Naples].

And I also fear technological interference.

Look, three people will celebrate the victory on the right.

Putin would get drunk on vodka to celebrate, of course.

Orbán, in addition, would come out of isolation, and the last to celebrate would be Donald Trump: a G-7 country that looks towards a logic like his would be perfect for him.

Q.

Do you think there could be contagion in Europe if Meloni wins in Italy?

R.

Yes. And it is the sign of a response to the crisis experienced by the pandemic and the war.

A stomach response and a break in balance.

An anti-European response.

And I am very concerned that contagion will occur.

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