Mario Monti's Impossible Mission

By Giglio Reduzzi

For TIME magazine picturing an Italian guy on the front cover of its international edition, with no disparaging intentions, is a rare event by itself and one of great pride for us, who are the man’s fellow citizens. Our pleasure reaches the climax when we find out the person in the picture is our Premier and the caption is: Can this man save Europe? Mind you: Europe, not Italy, as one could expect. Under the conditions, writing about him, however shortly, becomes irresistible for a man, like me, who lives on bread and politics. Too bad that I am known to being frank. In fact my frankness obliges me to write that, in my modest opinion (and, to quote Winston Churchill, I have a lot to be modest about), the answer to TIME caption is: I wish he could. And that is why I am calling this essay: Mario Monti’s Impossible Mission.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Jul 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9788867511990

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Foreword

First of all, who is Mario Monti?

Mario Monti is Italy’s current Premier.

He is a university teacher, picked by the Chief of State (Giorgio Napolitano) to save Italy from following Greece on the road to economic disaster.

He is no politician and was never elected.

Despite it, and despite being there to dispense bitter pills rather than candies, he seems to enjoy more popularity than any of his predecessors. In Italy and abroad.

Even the Press speaks well of him.

This fact is certainly hard to understand and requires an explanation.

His very appointment by the President of the Republic needs to be explained.

In fact Prime Ministers are usually chosen among members of Parliament, who, in turn, are elected by people.

Monti was neither. Or, better, would have been neither, if Giorgio Napolitano had not hastened to name him Life Senator a couple of days before. In this way the anomaly of Monti’s nomination was halved: he was not elected by people, but, now, he was a member of Parliament.

I know all this may sound bizarre or, better still, Byzantine to you, but this is the way it goes in some Italian old people circles, to which Napolitano (86) obviously belongs.

(My opinion on Life Senators is expressed under Attachments.)

Though alien to politics, Mario Monti was not unknown in Bruxelles, seat of the European Union.

In fact, not long ago, he was a member of the European Commission.

The circumstance was of paramount importance, since, as you certainly know, for all Countries who share the same currency (Euro), economic politics is set and monitored in Bruxelles, by the European authorities, not the national ones.

(It is for this reason that the U.K. said: no, thanks, we will keep the Pound.)

Therefore it was essential that, even before getting the green light from the Italian Parliament, the Premier-to-be had the approval of Bruxelles’ dignitaries.

This was especially true at a time when Italy was experiencing a deep crisis, which was seen as a threat to the entire Euro-zone. It is not casual that TIME magazine, in picturing Mario Monti on the front page of its European edition, asks