At the Festival du Livre in Paris, the Head of State underlined that “exchange opens minds and allows the removal of prejudices and artificial notions that hinder knowledge, driving us back into neo-tribal enclosures”
For the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella “Exchange opens minds, especially for one solid and admired culture like that Italian“. It allows you to remove prejudices and artificial notions that hinder knowledge, driving us back into neo-tribal enclosures”. “The progress of the world – continued the president in an interview with “Corriere della Sera” – has also taken place, if not above all, thanks to exchanges with ‘other’ cultures”.
“Towards a great European House” Literature, rights, coexistence: these are the themes on which the Head of State reflects on the occasion of the start of the Festival du Livre in Paris, where our country is the guest of honour. And he explains: “Italy’s participation, in addition to recognizing the contribution made by Italian civilization to global sentiment, represents a great opportunity to continue along the path of an osmosis that increasingly consolidates the common platform of values on which the European House is founded The encounter and dialogue between cultures offers the opportunity to get to know each other beyond consolidated stereotypes and creates, in comparison, the conditions for overcoming the fragility of an interpretation of identity based on closure and rejection of the other”.
Knowledge to share The book – explains the President of the Republic -, like any other way of expressing human creativity, represents a tool for sharing knowledge. Reading is essential.”
Solidarity and common destiny There are those who argue, continues Mattarella, that the future passes through the construction of a “European brotherhood” and on this front the president points out how “European fraternity, if derived from the Enlightenment triad – together with equality and freedom, should be understood as an awareness of a common destiny and goes beyond solidarity. If the values expressed by the individual communities established in the state are common, it is natural and above all authentic to speak of European ‘fraternity'”.
Autonomy and dignity in our Constitution “The founding fathers of our Republic – resumes Mattarella – measured themselves against this thought and, in a first draft of article 3 of our Constitution, wrote a passage of rare expressive beauty: the norms, according to this primitive version of the text, were placed ‘in order to ensure the autonomy and dignity of the human person and to promote at the same time the necessary social, economic and spiritual solidarity, in which people must complement each other”.
“The value of Italianness” “The Italian presence at the events in Paris and Frankfurt puts us back in the heart of the cultural, as well as political, geography of the EU. “It’s nice to think – observes the Head of State – that Italy is not only its past but one casket permanently enriched. The Italian cultural industry is a driving force behind our production model which allows the creations of ingenuity to be showcased. Italy enjoys a very high reputation abroad, which invests its past but also its present. The Italian way of life means that, after more than a century and a half of migrations in the Americas, in Australia and in Northern Europe, alongside the fourth and fifth generation Italians who play significant roles in the landing countries, they make their way many, many ‘aspiring Italians’, who appreciate our culture. Certainly, being Italian appears to be a value in itself. And it shouldn’t be squandered.”