Welcome back, intellectuals

“But it is absolutely necessary to take citizens’ scepticism seriously”. We are taught that “but”, suggesting an unexpected contrast in light of a first clause, should never be placed in the opening clause. Furthermore: “to bring citizens closer to Europe, the political realm should address the themes that are dear to them”. Welcome among us, welcome back to reality, are the phrases that come to mind before the appeal of an authoritative group of social-democrats from various Countries for the forthcoming European elections, released a few days ago. Welcome to nobody’s land of the crisis and European identity. A decade ago, at the time of the failure of the European Constitution, that very concept was seen as a useless heritage of a bygone past. Welcome back to reality, because notwithstanding domestic issues, European elections have a specific bearing.In reality, the European Parliament is a very particular assembly. It is numerous (751 MEPs), multi-language, elected across 28 States with differentiated electoral systems in a few days’ timeframe (May 22-25). But it never managed to attract constituencies’ enthusiastic participation. Indeed, a homogeneous European political offer is lacking. In every nation there are local political forces, most of which are connected within five or six large, continental-scale, political parties.But this year the matter at stake is not the forecast of the Lisbon Treaty, whereby the European Council consults with the Parliament to identify a candidate at the presidency of the Commission “taking into account electoral results” along with the candidates proposed by the various European parties. The matter at stake now is the electoral outcome of parties with various degrees of “populist”, and “eurosceptic” traits, which in more or less radical ways oppose what has been considered a distant, concentrated, self-referential power, which in the years of crisis that proceeded at uneven pace has brought profit to few and losses to many.The recent investigative report by SIR Europe on populism highlighted a set of blatant contradictions, along with the limits of such stances present across all member States, along with simple and loud-spoken slogans, and the dynamics of consensus that gained grounds as a result of the crisis. And that’s when, expelled from the debate on politically correctedness, crushed by buraucracy, technocracy, the theme of identity comes back to the fore gaining a central role, despite its extreme, manipulative shapes. To take it seriously and not leave it to become an electoral gain of eurosceptics is the true challenge of this electoral campaign: a delicate passage in the history of the EU, which is called to come to terms with itself to the very end.