Prodi urges the Democratic Party: “Move the challenge from the cities to the countryside, Europe will not be strengthened if half of the voters don’t vote”

The Democratic Party must move the electoral challenge “from the cities to the countryside”, focusing on topics that are “exciting for the future”, because “if the kids are unaware that there are European elections, we will have the debate among ourselves”. Romano Prodi he feels the urgency of rallying the democratic electorate in view of the June elections: “Either we launch an electoral campaign on vital issues or Europe dissolves. We cannot go with half the voters to renew the world”, warns the former prime minister and former president of the EU Commission. The occasion for his recall is offered by the presentation, in the Senate Refectory room, of the book by Dario Nardella ‘The universal city’.

“We have real opportunities and very clear arguments in front of us”, says Prodi, “the problem is whether we can take advantage of them. Nationalism, otherwise, wins. With German rearmament, the issue of the army and common defense feels even more urgent.” And he defines it as “unthinkable” to move forward with unanimity, otherwise “we’ll put Orban as president and we’ll never talk about it again.” “Or we move or everything will corrode”, urges the former prime minister. “The Mediterranean has been lost for years now: in Libya we have the Turks and the Russians. If we don’t strengthen our being together we end up badly. If we don’t strengthen it, Europe will truly dissolve.”

In the debate, moderated by the director of Republic, Maurizio MolinariNardella also uses peremptory tones: “We must represent this electoral campaign as a question of life or death. If we are between tactics and totonomists, with the usual vice of reading the European elections as national elections, not only will there be the problem of abstention, but an anti-European vision will take hold which has every interest in ensuring that the electoral campaign does not gain momentum and this moment is not represented as decisive for the future”.