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Published on 2024-09-22 09:00:00 | words: 2592
I know that the expectation is for this article to be focused on something else, notably:
_ composition of the European Commission for the second term of the same incumbent
_ Draghi report
_ interactions about the two
_ etc.
Frankly, will wait for the formal hearings and their results, before sharing further detailed commentary on any of those elements, but you can see what I shared in previous articles in this series.
The structure of the articles in this series from now on will skip the separation between "Rationale" and "Commentary", as I will focus just on the European Union.
You can obviously extract and derive from this and further articles some general ideas, but I will try to keep them short and focused on just that subject.
Notably, focusing on the future of the European Union.
Anyway, as I shared with a friend earlier this week over dinner (he expressed his skepticism about the "AI storytelling" that shared in the previous article, about the United States of Europe), we are at a critical juncture where, as Mario Draghi in his report-political manifest shared, the choice it is about changing or fading away- tinkering and floating or cameo marketing is not enough anymore.
Tertium non datur: for my local observers in Turin and Piedmont, this is apparently something not so easy to process- but more later in this article about how this dovetails with a cultural aspect that apparently we are exporting.
To quote an old Luttwak book (well, books), we need a "Grand Strategy": not the old-fashioned one that ignored the context, but one based on more modern principles of systemic thinking and a bit more of behavioral economics, and a bit less of classical homo economicus mindset in those designing strategic initiatives.
We Europeans pride ourselves to be able to cope with complexity, and our finely honed bureaucracies with centuries of history converged on creating a new bureaucracy that inherited that pride and those embedded Pavlovian reflexes, and spent since the 1950s developing it.
Anybody who dealt with bureaucracies long enough knows that "temporary arrangement" is an oxymoron: whatever the reasons for its creation, the primal instinct of any bureaucracy is its own survival.
We Italians know that quite well: like it or not, already in Ancient Rome basically offices were not based on merit, but on connections and even outright "exchange".
I could share a long list of books, but let's be "light"- you can search this website for "bureaucracy" and find plenty of past quotes that I shared since, say, 2012- as most of the articles I published from 2007 until 2012, while my starting base and focus was Brussels, are now offline.
Maybe eventually will do what I did when I had my e-zine on cultural and organizational change in 2003-200,5 while having as starting base London and actually preparing to return to Italy, i.e. convert and update that material and re-publish into a minibook (you can read it here for free, but you are welcome to support my writing and research by buying a copy on Amazon or join my Patron profile- see the link at the top of this page).
Anyway, we did something that sometimes sounds like the East India Company, as in the end really the European Commission bureaucracy increasingly is answerable just to itself, and actually influences back those that are supposed to be its "watchers" and "sponsors".
It is a trend that was already there before 2019, but just increased, as having a bureaucracy with legislative initiative power and few crises to deal with generated a "Monnet moment bonanza", i.e. plenty of cases where jumping forward to push ahead, knowing that nobody would dare then to seem to undermine initiative by expressing dissent could be taken for granted (and if you are visiting my website you probably know how much I qualify those "Monnet" pushes as undemocratic).
Personally, I think that just because the three leading Member States (Germany, Italy, and the pivotal France that brought about Treaties with both of them since the 1960s to foster further "differential integration of the willing") are in a state of flux (I would not yet call it outright crisis) generates an opportunity to rethink and move forward.
Yes, because the European integration moved forward at times of crises, as they were the only times when resistance to change can be overcome by... a "Monnet moment".
Anyway, this would require political leadership willing to take initiatives that might well cost them the next elections, but that would set the ball in motion, as in the Fellini movie "Prova d'Orchestra": it is not anymore a matter of breaking few eggs to make an omelette, but to break down some walls to avoid having in Brussels the extreme tinkering that we Italians have been used to, tinkering that perpetuates itself (as any decent bureaucracy does) by building more and more "paperwork walls".
And you can see the results in Italy: a bit of this a bit of that not to displease too much any tribe resulted in web of mutual obligations that makes any selective reform virtually impossible.
Italy is the country of linear cuts across the board, or epocal shifts, not of phasing-out selectively elements of the status quo and phasing-in elements of innovation.
Also, this potential European political leadership should shatter the other worrying trend that, again, started well before 2019.
As probably started after the two failed referenda on the European Constitution, that "contract with the Europeans" written by lawyers for lawyers and sold with a massive arrogance à la "we know better, trust us and vote yes", that backfired and resulted in the Lisbon Treaty and continuous tinkering thereafter, including the Brexit.
Which trend? Well, what since I was made a dozen years ago to return to live in and around my birthplace, Turin, saw as an annoying constant: the less you implement, the more you announce, and the more your next announce has to be bigger bolder than the previous one.
Reminds the first part of Kevin Smith's movie "Dogma" about two fallen angels and a "marketing hype" campaign replacing Church reforms.
First all with your own resources, but then launching balls in the air that can be sustained only by resources provided by others.
And routinely I did wonder why they should, if the Leit Motiv is "give us resources for our sketchy plan, and we will control it and its evolutions").
As I said Thursday at dinner, the key point is simply that we European misused the tools that anyway we put on the table, e.g. the Committee of the Regions, which could have been a way to involve into the legislative and reform process the territories that share common interests, transcending the national boundaries, and potentially creating a "European Common" that is still lacking.
Because the more announces and initiatives you launch from the top of your ivory tower, the less will make sense or be implementable when landing on the ground- "we, the people", to recall the incipit of another Constitution:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
Also, another characteristic of the "annuncitis" (as I call it) is that the lifespan of each is extended by creating further micro-bureaucracies underfunded and underskilled, which are kept artificially alive, but with a "WunderKammer" attitude (piling up), not a strategy or even a common purpose: in Italy, this results in wonderful opportunities for job creation by political patronage, since decades.
Seen from outside, this results in what some said that we European got really good at regulating, but lost innovation and implementation abilities.
As we lecture and dictate, but apparently are so self-assured of our innate ability to organize the world at large that we stop listening.
We regulate and inspire others to do their own regulations.
Yet, they are those who make applicable regulations, as we routinely forget the capacity planning implied in any regulatory an compliance initiative.
E.g. phase-in and phase-out: how often you have different people do to both, and how often the same people instead are needed for both?
Look at the energy transition "galaxy of initiatives": from automotive to buildings, it is a routine of how many billions or trillions would be needed within few years, as if making an edict would be enough to generate the resources, and, instead, as done in Italy with the 110%, generate a "bubble".
In our Italian case, I lost count of the reports I received by those whose building community decided to use that tool, and ended up having inferior materials priced up, works done that barely a couple of years in show some issues or require maintenance that is not covered, etc.
In industry, as I wrote in past articles, I am more inclined to give credit to those that say that phase out e.g. of combustion engines implies phasing out or replacing whole subsegments and even supply chains (just consider removing or repurposing all the gas stations that we are so used to, and all that keep them humming).
I wrote in the past, already years ago, upon my return in Italy and during my first attempt, in 2018, to deliver again the same services that I delivered in the past, only to discover that in Turin there was demand and were sorely needed- provided I did not ask to be paid, and certainly not to be officially acknowledged as provider of those services, how quixotic had become locally the concept of "strategic thinking".
At the national legislative level, laws and government decrees used to promote renovating our industrial base within multi-year investments but tax credits that were to be refinanced, confirmed, modified each year.
At the business level, some Italian small companies did not understand that if they tinker with their company size to go past the dimension required to become a supplier for a German company by mixing apples and pears, and attract a process that was not anymore done from the German supplier of that German company, as that supplier was dismantling the activities to transition to another technology, they were asked to provide a stop gap, not to build a strategic business partnership.
Yes, since it was published I have not shared that much feed-back on the Draghi report: will do that in a separate article, on the line of others I previously wrote about industrial policy.
Because, beside the internal crisis of the three leading Member States (that could make sense to convert into a Monnet moment to jump forward into further integration e.g. on the industrial and structural side), we are at the centre of external crises, where frankly we were led into quagmires in a "March to Folly" fostered by our hubris coupled by a lack of a systemic view.
Outside Europe, we Europeans were routinely considered those good at rebuilding after wars- wars that we did not initiate.
Anyway, we forgot the concept of what entails war, so, I will share a personal cameo.
For unknown reasons since the early 1990s I always found in my activities abroad interactions with people from Lebanon, in business.
Yes, of course also because I was working in part and living in part in areas that attracted immigration when Lebanon ceased to be the Switzerland of Middle East.
And I shared over that dinner that quoted above a cameo that highlights better than anything else what we European have forgotten: wars end, but their scars can last for generations.
I remember that once with a Lebanese friend in Brussels we went for a late night kebap, and the surname of the owner was neither Turkish nor Lebanese, but from another country that suffered a massive exodus over a century ago.
When he heard that my friend was Lebanese and from a specific community, it was almost like a family reunion.
Why? Because in those terrible times back then, they had welcomed refugees (see here).
So, neither of them was there, neither of their parents and probable even grandparents were there, but those scars still lingered, including retaining language skills from the land of origin.
When we talk about recent Balkan wars, or ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, we Europeans adopt a technocratic approach: how many billions, how many buildings, how to build the local industry, etc- as if we had a bunch of classical economists leading the political initiative. and as if it were just a matter of balancing books.
The same attitude was followed with developing (and maintaining) capabilities, from preparing for crises (e.g. the recent COVID crises, that clearly showed how many locations were ready just on paper), to building up a viable defense (look at how much materiel shifted to Ukraine de facto lowered capabilities in European Union Member States), to keeping a posture in foreign policy that is credible (e.g. look at our significant level of collective irrelevance in the Middle East).
And this is an area where our current internal soul searching could actually require a significant shift not just in communication approaches, but also in listening approaches: we need less "parachute money" and "parachute initiatives", and more co-management that is tailored to the needs, if we want to converge and project a posture outside that is considered.
Then, we could finally say that we have strategic partnerships with other countries: just dropping few billions here and there and having flash mob style photo opportunities is not enough.
Will this happen soon?
Well, on this point, probably I will join for now the skepticism of my friend: the current European Commission for now seem too focused on itself to see beyond a series of visibility cameos.
Visibility cameos whose rationale will fade away as soon as our existing financial resources and assets will be unable to support external initiatives, and will start focusing just on inward-looking building of a fading Fortress Europe.
Stay tuned- it will be a long and bumpy journey, from what has been shown so far.