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Published on 2024-11-24 20:40:00 | words: 2367
Yes, this article is significantly overdue- if you were to look at the original schedule for this series.
Anyway, as I wrote yesterday within yet another article of my "organizational support" series, the reschedule is linked to the unfolding of events.
What is that series? Where basically share examples and then pointers to prior publications where previously went deeper with examples and discussion about approaches etc based on my business, political, and personal experience.
The idea is to promote reuse of my experience and derived lessons learned in cultural, organizational, technological change, as writing and delivering workshops/brainstorming sessions for me are some of the best ways to cross the Ts and dot the Is, to thesaurize experience.
Do not worry: while yesterday's article, "Organizational Support 12: communication flows", as most in that series, starts from my experience and then outlines previously published material (e.g. yesterday's 5800+ words in reality contain pointers and signposts toward 500+ pages between mini-books on change, previously shared articles, and datasets commentary)...
... this article is sharing concepts, observations, and ideas based upon news.
Incidentally: due to my mistake in the way I created a bit of the "engine" that serves articles on this website (looking at the day and not also at the time), I saw that already three readers had access to the article- as an empty article.
While a previous article was empty on purpose (albeit, as people keep reading it despite having just a couple of dozen of words, will soon add a digest of all the articles that preceded it), this one is not.
The title? As explained in the previous article in this series, links to a funny movie released slightly before the Berlin Wall went up.
(Spoiler alert: sorry, but need to discuss the movie) The "one-two-three" movie is funny, and watched it few times in few languages, as... a test on my language skills- because it is spoken at a fast clip.
Being set not too long after WWII, it blends with humour pinpointing to themes that were relevant in Germany at the time: from denazification, to a bit of colonization from USA and USSR, to flexible political allegiances (my favourite is the transformation of a communist protester into a blue-blood landing a top-notch job).
And the funniest part is the American executive who tries one-two-three to fast pace "fixing", ending up fixing himself out.
Anybody who read articles on this website during the previous term of President VDL knows that I did not appreciate at all the de facto transformation of the European Commission into something different, and from what I read from non-Italian correspondents in Brussels (we Italians are structurally inclined to praise the winner, see this cartoon), I am not alone.
I think that what happened so far in this preparation of the second term is actually a consequence of the way the European Union institutions have been, since the 1950s, designed-by-continuous-tinkering and pushing through reforms, and seeking the consensus later (yes, part of that is the Monnet approach to reforms).
Reason? The way of the "EU organizational architecture" is built, when enough converge on pushing through something, even those who disagreed are less than inclined to publicly disagree- a show of unity therefore eventually ensues (eventually, maybe after some bartering).
It was fine when, anyway, there was a consensus between a core group looking to move ahead, but opened the door to what some news reports called "imperial" attitude.
Which includes being confirmed into the role of President by a coalition within the Parliament and then, as anyway the "Members of the EU Government" (what the European Commission has de facto become) are "proposed" by Member States' governments, recalibrating during the confirmation hearings, after initially providing criteria for wannabe commissioners (e.g. quotas), and then obtaining that one is replaced.
The European Commission during the recent crises started in 2020 (and a bit before) turned into a self-referential entity more often than not leading the Member States into a consensus on what had been decided at the top, with initiatives that exceeded in some cases even the powers of elected President of the United States- goodbye Montesquieu.
The latter?
Pour qu'on ne puisse abuser du pouvoir, il faut que, par la disposition des choses, le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir (see here- in French).
So, we started with having our own version of the "State of the Union", which has a different "raison d'être" in a different set of checks-and-balances.
And went way past that.
Now commentators are discussing how the new coalition assembled to have the commissioners confirmed will impact on the "European green deal": but the point is really something else.
We, the European Union citizens, elected the European Parliament with a majority that elected to confirm the incumbent President of the European Commission.
Then, the President of the European Commission, due also to the way commissioners are selected, obtained a different majority.
Which, actually, is a "presidential" reform in and by itself, moreover considering who, within the European Union institutional architecture, has the real power to legislate (hint: not the Parliament- see an outline on Wikipedia, follow the links within the bibliography of that article if you want to learn more).
I wrote a bit about the Quirinale Treaty since it was announced (e.g. see here an article from 2023-01-10), and also about the later proposal from France and Germany to implement reforms that have been requested since decades.
Just a personal disclosure: last time prior to the 2024 elections I voted in Italy was 2019- again, another regional and European Parliament vote.
Skipped all the elections in-between on purpose: what a joke, to a have a political government with the right, and then have have again a government with the same President of the Council of the Ministers, but with the left, and doing just the reverse on various policies.
I have no issues with a "national unity" government whenever there is a significant crisis (albeit would prefer to have governments that get their mandate from voters, not from backroom dealings), but flip-flopping this way did frankly show, to me, more interest in retaining seats or becoming minister than anything else.
Since returning to Italy in 2012 (but even before, since 1980s, under a different party name) my usual voting choice was the Partito Democratico.
Although I have never been a communist, but a reformist (a "political leaning test" on the Einaudi Foundation marked me as a liberal from the left), the Partito Democratico is the successor of the Italian Communist party, but with the takeover (or viceversa) of various "splinter cells" of the former Christian Democrats.
As if, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, in Germany SPD had absorbed parts of CDU/CSU, and the latter had dissolved.
In the 2024 elections, voted for a coalition called "Stati Uniti d'Europa", specifically for Emma Bonino and Matteo Renzi, respectively from +Europa and Italia Viva.
I do not like them personally (albeit voted for Renzi at the Democratic Party primary long, long ago- not a card holder of Partito Democratico, but it needed a change, and it was an "open" primary, i.e. also non-members, by paying 2EUR, could vote).
And I do not like what often smack of a personality cult of their followers (helped by their own self-promotion)- but I considered them useful considering the expected rounds of reforms at the European Union level, more than many of the (eventually elected) alternatives.
Nothing new to those who read my previous articles- the 2017 "Il Paese dei Leader" was read over 19k times, while its 2019 follow-up "Il paese dei leader / The leaders' country takes a page from Vichy" was read almost 22k times.
Let's just say that this "liberal from the left" did not bring that much fortune to either candidate.
Now, the upside of the two terms of President VDL is that at last all the ambiguities and backdoors within the separation of powers at the European Union level are showing up their true colors.
After decades of tinkering, on its potential road to become a real European Union, each one of those elements is not an element of flexibility, or even that ubiquitous "resilience", but an inherent, structural, "chink in the organizational armour" of the European Union.
If there is a consensus to work around weaknesses, it is feasible to tiptoe around them.
When you shift into permanent "crisis management mode", ambiguities risk to compound issues, and generate a flurry of temporary tinkering, kind of "temporary reforms à la carte", tinkering without having time to consider the potential impacts.
So, following the title of this article, the "one" was re-appointing President VDL at the helm of the European Commission.
The "two" is having the side-effects of structural ambiguities generate potentially something akin to what we had in Italy when we had two governments in a row with the same President of the Council of Ministers, but opposite political majority.
The "three" is the linking up with all the choices made during the previous term, under a different context, including commitments from anything to the Middle East to Ukraine, to post-war reconstruction of Ukraine- while the scenario is evolving in a different direction before even the second term starts.
I will skip discussing the melodrama about the delayed approval: frankly, knowing that anyway there were little options, looked from my perspective as a way to justify switching agenda between VDL1 and VDL2, a bit as happened in Italy years ago between Conte I and Conte II.
Courtesy of the availability of an alternative majority, now that following the USA elections and the expansion of the conflict in Ukraine (with the confirmation of North Korea not just supplying weapons, but also soldiers), plus the situation in the Middle East, probably the European Union has to do some re-assessment.
Including by developing an energy provisioning strategy (including nuclear energy- and I am still skeptical about waste disposal, the reason why was voting to shut down Italian nuclear power stations, decades ago) that would make impossible to rely on the left-green side of the political spectrum.
What put on the table first the French-German proposal, then the Draghi Report, in terms of political choices presented as if they were mere technocratic "manifest destiny", is still there.
If anything, the changes over the last few months made even more urgent to introduce a real separation of powers with democratic legitimacy.
As I wrote today on Facebook, some in Italy complained that I write about what I have no business to write about.
Well, I beg to differ, as cultural and organizational change is cultural and organizational change also when involves politically elected (or appointed) organizations.
Moreover... when you started actively being interested and involved in advocating European political integration when you were 17.
The contraction of the "industry of industries" (automotive) due to the shift is undermining the industrial base built in Europe across the XX century, while presenting plans to shift to the next technological "industry of industries" but using nice words and piles of cash, is not a real industrial policy.
Too little, too late: you have to manage also the transition.
Currently the European Union is a "lame duck": no direction, commitment to what even those directly involved are trying to reposition on (e.g. Ukraine, but also Netanyahu's Israel- I have no qualms with Israel per se), taking stand as if it were politically and strategically relevant, when instead contented itself to be even more than before an economic giant and a political dwarf, on the global scene.
Will the European Union be able to reform itself and converge its resources looking at a long-term repositioning (considering also demographic trends)?
For now, the European Union decision-making approach, to use another simile from the animal realm, looks a lot like a deer frozen in the middle of a road in front of the headlights of an incoming truck.
So, I side with President Macron's call to become "omnivores" on the global scene, as well as the recent mission from the Italian President concerning China.
If Trump's USA turns inward and expands the "America first", we Europeans should consider hedging: close to and knowing Africa, the only demographically young continent in the XXI century, and balancing between USA and China.
As Germany is busy with its own internal issues, the other two partners in the Elysée/Quirinale Treaties have to take care of becoming the engine driving the European Union toward a different role- and real reforms.
Stay tuned!