Beware of surrendering to the new ‘curtain’

There is a new “Iron curtain” in Europe, which, as the one tragically known in the past and removed from history in 1989, divides the continent in two parts. This division is not always sharp but not less profound, often deathly, but different from the past. The line of division of a bygone past used to divide Eastern and Western Europe, separating Western democracies from communist regimes, the former under the protective umbrella of Americans, the latter dogging the directives of Soviet Union. Today the new “curtain” passes from Ukraine to Greece, and flows into the Mediterranean, signalling a border that is far from definite between war and peace, between solid economies and others bordering default, between the Europe of Community integration and the Countries that in Asia and Africa have never undertaken the path of development and today are the victims of poverty, conflicts and mass migration.   The new impalpable wall can be perceived in the folds of the negotiations in Minsk, where Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany (the latter two are European powers, which have granted themselves the right to speak on behalf of the 28 EU states) have sought an ‘acceptable’ way out to end the war that is being fought for months in the eastern regions of Ukraine, which Moscow is determined to get its hands on. The truce drafted in the night between 11 and 12 February now requires new peace negotiations. The “curtain” can be seen also in Euroland: with Greece called to come to terms with a dramatic financial situation, unemployment and social despair, with the need to obtain funds from the EU, the ECB and the IMF, but forced, for internal political reasons, to feign security so as to irritate those same countries that so far, for better or for worse, have allowed Athens to proceed, hoping to catch their breath to restart the economy and revitalize the system-country.And how could we not see, once more, that “curtain” which across the Mediterranean marks the distance separating Europe on the one side and North African countries, the Middle East and internal Asian states? The mass migrations landing on Italian and Maltese shores, pressing the frontiers of Spain and Greece, are evidence of a global, interdependent world whose demographic, economic and cultural phenomena have not found a corresponding regulatory capacity in institutions – whether national, regional or international.Thus the conflict worms it way through Ukraine and Russia despite global appeals; Greece, bearing Tsipras’ defiant bluff, cries out for help, but no one reaches out without the certainty of new commitments; and the Mediterranean countries of Europe continue to welcome refugees and desperate people (when they are not in the situation of fishing their corpses at sea) without the help of other European States. In this rather gloomy picture of the current situation, there have indeed been attempts to find wise, concrete solutions; efforts are being put into place to recover peace in Ukraine, to restore hope among the Greek population, to help those European countries exposed towards the EU’s “external borders.” At the Minsk summit was highlighted the need to silence the weapons in Russia and Ukraine. The Eurogroup of February 11 has not led to a solution to the Greece-case, but a new negotiation has already been fixed for February 16. A specific meeting on migration (Triton, Mare Nostrum…) has been tabled for the end of the month, while the informal summit of heads of government and State of February 12 in Brussels addressed all of these themes, as well as the need for a common response to terrorism. However, all these situations need to be marked by the explicit, reiterated shared determination to reach a permanent solution. Speaking of the outcomes of Wednesday’s summit, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Chairman of the Eurogroup, rightly affirmed: “First we need a common political ground, then experts will be able to find a technical solution.” This is true for the financial and economic situation of Greece as for peace in Eastern Europe, for a joint answer to the migration phenomena and for all the other challenges that Europe has to face today. This politics is at the centre of the stage with its protagonists, its institutions, its liturgies, its negotiations, its rules, its (uplifting) agreements rather than its (downgrading) compromises. It’s still the time to believe in politics: those “good” politics that tear down walls and old curtains, and that build new bridges.