Thursday 3 May 2012

Corruption?What the EU can do

Corruption is everywhere in Italy. Rarely a day goes by that one does not hear about a new scandal involving some politician who pocketed a kickback in exchange for rigging a lucrative construction contract. Every time a scandal breaks out, politicians rolling over each other to condemn the people involved, claiming that they are “bad apples” and portraying the image that it is just a few isolated cases in Southern Italy, mainly involving blue collar criminals. If this was the case, as it is in countries such as France, Germany, the UK and Spain, corruption and organized crime would play a marginal role in the societal structure. In Italy, it is an endemic problem that has played a central role in its history. But allow me to start from the beginning.
In his brilliant book, Il Ritorno del Principe (The Return of the Prince), Roberto Scarpinato points to Italy’s roots to explain the phenomenon of corruption and mafia. He claims that the basis of political and morale thought in Italy were centred on the ideals of Machiavelli’s The Prince, where the ends justify the means and political power is to be internalized for personal gain and aggrandizement. Rulers of the city states, from Cesare Borgia to Lorenzo de Medici and especially the Popes (pretty much all of them, but especially Alessandro IV) embodied this ideal. Actions that we would nowadays consider nepotistic, acts of patronage, or outright criminal where the norm. While other European states experienced a Cultural Revolution where ideas of englightment and democracy spread, Italy remained dominated by despotic rulers from the Pope in Rome to the various feuding princes in the North. Italy’s historical legacy as a colonized territory with Bourbon kings ruling Naples and its surrounding territories further worsened the situation.
To add to a desperate picture, the “unification” was seen as an invasion of the Piemontesi of Southern lands. They levied higher taxes, treated the Southerners savagely, and imposed that they could only buy products produced by the Piemontesi at protectionist prices. In essence, they were treated like an occupied territory. Any activity which was in defiance of the occupiers, such as tax evasion, was seen as patriotic and morally acceptable.
The mafia grew out of this context. The Sicilian mafia, arguably the most famous, was created not be roughnecks and violent criminals, but by the elite of Sicilian society who created a system where corrupt activity became institutionalized in the very structure of society. The ideals of meritocracy and the free market were supplanted to the principles of nepotism and crony capitalism. Magistrates and politicians who did not follow this line were either excluded (…..) or murdered (Falcone, Borsellino, etc)
What the EU can do
The EU can serve as a guardian against this epidemic. It has in the past. The Maastricht Treaty excluded Italy from the Community due to its spiralling debt, which had reached a peak of 118% of the GDP. To be able to re-join, government officials had to massively reduce spending and cut “inefficient” programs that the state could no longer support. It had become common practice for the state to use the mechanism of inflation to “compensate” for corrupt practices. Under the new EU regime, this policy was no longer an option.
Chancellor Kohl of Germany was another advocate of stronger debt control and anti-mafia measures. Kohl was inequivocable when he stated that Italy should only be able to join the then-newly formed EU if they passed more stringent anti-mafia legislation. His fear was grounded in the thought that a single market and currency would make it infinitely easier for laundered money to travel around Europe, virtually without leaving traces.
States and people grow when they are exposed to foreign influence and ideals which then become integrated into their own. Not all are good, but this process is necessary for a society to gain new insights and new customs. For Italy, this opportunity presents itself in the form of the EU, for better or worse. Strict impositions on national debt and anti-mafia legislation are features in which the EU can be a powerful ally. In the EU, honest, hard-working Italians can find a powerful ally which shares the same goals, albeit for different reasons
Italy’s history is different from that of other Western European States. The imperfect unification and rememants of the Wild West city state mentality is still embedded in the ruling class who have been unable to progress socially as the ruling elite in other countries have. Italy needs an ally for this fight which has crippled the whole Southern portion and left more dead than…. The EU can be that ally. They have played an important role in the past and can do it again.