Home » Italians and Germans look in the mirror – Michael Braun

Italians and Germans look in the mirror – Michael Braun

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Relations between Italy and Germany could not be more harmonious, at least according to the highest representatives of the two countries. Each of their meetings – whether it is between the chancellor and the prime minister or between the Italian and the German president of the republic – ends with a communiqué that celebrates stainless friendship, perfect commonality of views, mutual trust.

But we know that the reality is a bit different. Of course, economic relations are very close, starting with the fact that Germany is the number one market for Italian exports. Of course, hundreds of thousands of Italians have emigrated to Germany and millions of Germans spend their holidays in Italy every year. Of course, the two governments, the two countries cooperate profitably in a thousand fields.

But how fragile this friendship sometimes turns out to be was there for all to see last year, at the start of the covid-19 pandemic. When Italy in March 2020 was already in full emergency, Germany in response has seen fit to ban the export of masks and gowns to the south. And when Italy, again in the same month, launched the proposal for a vigorous European response to the economic earthquake caused by the pandemic, at first the German government shrugged, brandishing Eurobonds as a “pure slogan”.

So again Italy had the feeling of “having been left alone”, as already in the euro crisis, as during the refugee emergency, a feeling fortunately overcome by the launch of the recovery fund European. Against the background of these recent experiences, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation – close to the German Social Democratic Party – commissioned Ipsos to carry out an extensive survey carried out in the two countries to understand more about the evaluations, judgments and prejudices that Italians and Germans give of themselves, of the other people, of the role that the two nations exercise in Europe.

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Italy undervalued
First of all, a (shared) asymmetry in economic evaluation is striking. Both Italians and Germans are convinced that Germany is a prosperous country and that Italy is instead facing a severe crisis. And they are so convinced that they tend to undermine Italy’s capabilities. 74 per cent of Italians are convinced that Italy has not achieved its objectives in the energy turnaround, agreed at European level, and 71 per cent think that Germany has been virtuous in this field. The exact opposite is true: Italy has even exceeded its goals while Germany has missed them.

The same is true when it comes to industrial strength. Both the Italians and the Germans correctly answer that Germany is number one in Europe in this field, but they put France and the United Kingdom in second position, and place Italy only in fourth place. Instead Italy as an industrial producer is second in Europe!

We see a similar asymmetry, with partly counter-factual judgments, also on the role of the two countries in the European Union. Asked whether Italy is a contributing country or a beneficiary of the European budget, only 5 percent of Germans see it as a taxpayer, 71 percent as a beneficiary. The exact opposite is true: Italy pays four billion euros more into the EU coffers than it receives. But this fact in turn is clear only to 41 per cent of Italian respondents.

The judgment on the weight that the two countries exert in Europe is also asymmetrical. Italians and Germans agree on the important weight of Germany, but while 39 per cent of Germans attribute an important role to Italy in the decisions of the Union, only 22 per cent of Italians are convinced of it. It is therefore not surprising that only 29 per cent of them see more advantages than disadvantages in EU membership and only 24 per cent in euro membership.

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The desire to leave the EU does not follow from these skeptical judgments, on the contrary. Like the vast majority of Germans, 68 percent of Italians also want to stay in the Union, 63 percent in the euro. Indeed, many Italians want a more incisive Union. 63 percent of Italians are in favor of a solution to economic problems at a European level, not a national one (Germans: 36 percent), 79 percent of a common policy against the COVID-19 pandemic (Germans: 64 percent) , 87 percent to a European approach to immigration (Germans: 70 percent), 87 percent to a common response to climate change (Germans: 83 percent).

And it is certainly good news that both Italians and Germans overwhelmingly approve the fact that the huge recovery fund European Union is funded jointly at European level: especially for Germany it is a radical change. Both Martin Schulz, former president of the European parliament, member of the Bundestag and president of the Ebert Foundation, and Enzo Amendola, undersecretary for European affairs in the Draghi government who jointly presented the survey on April 14, start from this fact.

Schulz spoke of a distrust, a skepticism in relations between the two countries in recent years and cited another fact highlighted by the survey: both Italian and German citizens always see the other country as the one that benefits most from the European Union. . A vision to be overcome, according to Schulz, in favor of a vision that contemplates the fact that both can benefit from it. And so it states, the recovery fund it can be the basis of a new departure for Europe and for Italian-German relations. A vision shared by Amendola: even in his eyes in post-pandemic Europe we have all the cards to open a new chapter.

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