That could be a shame

Beppe Grillo is not the first politician, nor will he be the last, to say idiotic things about the Euro and Europe. He is like so many, open your mouth and things blow out. There are those who do it to express a blind faith in the EU (and awkwardly suffer the mistakes) and those on the other hand who attack without analyzing the ‘what and how’ (and nonetheless gain the advantage). Therefore, in this he is a politician like many, and you can like him or not. Even if a problem of responsability remains that goes beyond liking him or not.

Different from many politicians (and here I mean people who take politicking seriously, like David Cameron or Pierluigi Bersani, like the Dutch PM Mark Rutte or the Luxembourger Jean-Claude Juncker, different people in diverse political arenas with varied opinions on the Euro and the EU) or many academics like Paul Krugmann or Joseph Stiglitz or the many, less famous researchers who have been working on Europe for decades, Grillo however, has no political credibility or scientific approach to express himself in this field. To say that in Italy politicians steals is unfortunately -in large numbers- a truth (it’s enough to read the newspapers to find out); to say that he is against nukes is a legitimate opinion even for those, for example the one writing, who don’t even have a clear idea of what an atom is. Venturing into political operations already requires some extra study; it is not enough to have a “shared feeling” opinion. To speak seriously about Europe, if one goes beyond the chit chat among friends by expressing a ‘for or against’ for a strong union and one actually wants to express a hypothesis on thoughts and actions that are inside the heads of the 27 leaders, we need to at least speak a couple of other European languages (to glean as much as possible directly from the source, which is much more than just a connection to internet) and study the argument intensely, obviously after having met and discussed with these key players (whether they are good or bad – that’s not the point) of Europe. Beppe Grillo has not done these things. He is so far behind that he doesn’t even have a program for Europe. “Right now for us Europe is not a priority and we do not consider ourselves sufficiently ready to make concrete proposals on European themes, but we have the good will to initiate and work on it – yes that we have,” Francesco Attademo, candidate for the 5 Star Movement for the European district, one who should know things about this movement well, said 3 weeks ago with candor. Therefore if 3 weeks ago the Grillo followers were like this, what has happened recently to make Grillo feel like he is able to foretell the future of the European monetary policy?

I wrote this days ago: I don’t have an issue of preclusion for Grillo, for his Meps and for his movement. They bring a fresh perspective, fight to safeguard old needs never satisfied by politics; but still they have a long way to go, they are still not a “political force”. (I didn’t write party, I know they don’t want to be one but if they chose Parliament, they certainly do want to be a political force.) They have few and simple proposals, almost all legitimate by the way.  Consolidating those would enable them to make turn them into proposals and then actually policy. Meanwhile with more restraint than their founder, they strive to study the context on which to act because from the context, in politics, one cannot overlook. And not looking at it means having a short political life. And that could be a shame.

Lorenzo Robustelli

Beppe Grillo, interviewed by the German daily newspaper “Handelsblatt” said that Italy is “actually already out of the Euro.” The M5S head maintains that the leaders of northern European countries will support Rome inside the Euro zone “as long as they have investments fulfilled by their banks on Italian government securities. After which they will drop us like a hot potato.”