Pasquale Tridico on Social Justice and Political Change
Pasquale Tridico — an economist, university lecturer, and former director of Italy’s National Institute for Social Security — was a successful candidate for the Five Star Movement (M5S) in the recent European elections. In total, eight Members of the European Parliament were elected on M5S’s lists; Tridico was himself elected for the Southern constituency, with over 118,000 personal preferences to his name.
In his committed intellectual and political activity, Tridico has always marked himself out with a strong focus on social issues, rejecting the neoliberal logics that put up unchallengeable limits to any kind of fairness or justice.
This interview, conducted by Stefano Galieni, starts from the second round of the parliamentary elections in France, and what [to Italian eyes at least] came as a surprising outcome.
Pasquale Tridico: It seems to me that there was a clear determination expressed [in France]. In these elections, a reactionary right, a neoliberal centre and a popular and progressive left were all pitted against each other. The people chose the latter. I don’t want to get carried away by optimism. But this really points to something for our own country, too. I would like to see us replicating this achievement, also because there are many similarities with the outlook in Italy.
Stefano Galieni: The M5S has chosen to join “The Left” group in the European Parliament, also drawing favourable responses from forces such as Rifondazione Comunista and Sinistra Italiana. Why did you ask to join this group — and what are the most important bases of agreement?
The M5S has its base of reference in the popular layers of Italian society. Here, we are talking about part of the electorate that sometimes did not vote and took refuge in abstention. In the 2022 elections, what essentially attracted them was the expression of a popular voice, similar to the forces to the Left of the Democratic Party. So, a social bloc similar to ours that made a similar political offer.
We set out three key pillars:
- social justice, equality, fairness, the fight against poverty, and redistribution
- environmental justice, which is so crucial for our planet, and a
- politics of peace. For us Article 11 of the Constitution [on the Repudiation of War] is the text to go by.
These are the same pillars that we found in The Left, with a similar social bloc of reference, i.e. in the popular strata. In short, joining The Left seemed to me a natural way to go.
The representatives from various countries involved in The Left group have similar positions on the perspective of a “Social Europe.” The Left works to build institutions attentive to the rights of the most disadvantaged. Do you think there is a possibility of such a radical reform in the EU?
If no such prospect existed, then our political work, and what we have committed to doing, would all be pointless. A Social Europe is just what we need. So far, we have only built an economic union — a union based on money, on finance. As long as we do not get to the real meat of the issue, it will never be possible to change people’s minds and get them to see value in the European institutions.
We need to realise a project that puts peace and freedom at the heart of EU policy. We must act to ensure prosperity for all, to protect welfare, and to defend labour, which ever since Maastricht has never been sufficiently represented. Again — to simplify things — we need to think about three pillars that will dismantle the neoliberal economic fundamentals.
The first is to fight the devaluation of labour in the name of competitiveness — something which mainly weighs down on working people. The second is linked to the need for an independent monetary policy that does not only safeguard the single currency but puts employment policies at its heart, also considering the US Federal Reserve’s way of doing things. The third pillar is a fiscal policy worthy of the name. Instead of thinking only of cutting public spending and debt reduction in a deflationary regime, it needs a change of register. This model, which has imposed austerity, has not even brought the growth that the old liberal approach promised.
The EU has not grown more than the US, and Italy is one of the countries that has paid the most for these policies. Austerity has led to increased inequality without growth. And we are talking about thirty years of the wrong policies, following the sirens of neoliberalism. Even the International Monetary Fund was inspired by a model that envisaged structural adjustment. Instead, the choice was made to devote less to public spending and to be governed by the logic of competitiveness that makes inequalities structural. The traditional liberal approach has also been annihilated.
The Stability and Growth Pact is another critical point in the EU. How do you plan to intervene to change a system that in fact forces countries like Italy to make deep cuts in public spending?
The situation may change in light of the left-wing victory in France. We had a free-marketeer camp that lost the election, and a nationalist right in Italy which, with the Stability and Growth Pact, has strong contradictions to deal with. It is difficult to explain how [Italian Economy Minister Giancarlo] Giorgetti approves of the pact while in the European Parliament, the League [i.e. Giorgetti’s own party], Brothers of Italy and even the Democratic Party, abstained. There is a lack of understanding of what is being voted on. All they did in the election campaign was go on about how they were going to “change this Europe”. Then they didn’t do it, showing how totally incoherent they are.
I think there is an opportunity for Parliament to propose — and vote for — different choices. The Council moves in a direction that is often different from Parliament’s. I see things from a left-wing approach: those of us who want European integration cannot cut €13 billion in public spending. We need new progressive proposals to foster integration. We need to increase social spending and establish a European minimum citizens’ income, paid from the EU budget. Following that approach, if a crisis hit one one of the member states, especially one of the poorest ones, the EU could pick up the slack by providing resources through a central budget.
We should act like we did during the pandemic crisis, where there was a positive response. Think of the SURE [Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency] fund, which collectively financed the furlough payments for the people who could not go to work. This is a model we should follow — the opposite of what the Council’s diktats tell us. If we create a strong and open left-wing coalition that places the social question at the heart of things, we can achieve important results. This what Europe can be.
The Council and Commission risk maintaining the same orientation as they have in the past. So, do you confirm your opposition to the reappointment of Ursula Von der Leyen, whom you supported five years ago, as president of the Commission?
Even from previous statements, not only by [M5S leader Giuseppe] Conte, we made it clear that we would not vote for Von der Leyen. Compared to what she said five years ago, the Commission of which she was president has mounted a real U-turn on some crucial issues.
She had guaranteed investment in the Green New Deal, in the ecological and digital transition, even suggesting the possibility of decoupling spending from national deficits. After the invasion of Ukraine, she instead decided instead to decouple only defence spending. This could not be further from our approach.
Von der Leyen had also set out proposals for a minimum income and a minimum wage. Apart from the directives, these issues have gone missing. This is why we oppose her having a second term. We are consistent. Most probably she will have a majority, also taking advantage of the ambiguities of [Giorgia] Meloni and indeed of the Greens. Nobody has proposed other candidates, so we take it for granted that she should have the votes to secure re-election.
Back to your position in Europe. As you know, on the subject of war, or rather wars, even in The Left there are different sensitivities and emphasises. You have marked out a firm opposition to rearmament and sending arms to Ukraine. How do you plan to act both to stop this conflict and the ongoing massacre in Palestine?
We came into The Left with a lot of respect. We were clear on one point: peace, and the ways of putting an end to the conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East. We would like to convince our comrades not to support arms shipments to Ukraine. Equally, the [call for] EU-wide recognition of the State of Palestine, as reiterated by [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon also after his great election result, will be another key to defining the identity of The Left group.
Finally, an issue that divides left-wing forces in the EU is that of asylum rights and how to deal with migration. This is a structural issue, on which you, as M5S, have received criticism in the past. How do you think we can and should act within a European framework, on these issues?
To clarify our position: we voted against the last Migration Pact, which was presented in Parliament in the spring. I think we should think about it with the same approach as we have for the economy. We need a collective approach, based on real European solidarity, and which revises the Dublin regulation. The Migration Pact arrived very belatedly, with fake criteria and a lack of perspective.
We know that the xenophobic right has used immigration to win support. But this has also happened because of a lack of adequate proposals. There is surely a lot to think about. But if, for example, we started with a legal minimum wage, the first to benefit would be migrant workers. Their precarious conditions mean that they are first to pay for the current injustices. An appropriate wage policy would be important for speaking to them too, and for offering a fair response.
The interview was originally published in Italian at transform! italia.
Stefano Galieni is an Italian anti-racist activist with nearly 30 years of experience in migration policies. National Manager for Peace, Immigration, and Movements at PRC (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista) and former co-coordinator of the Migration WG of the European Left. Also serves as Vice President of ADIF (Rights and Borders Association) and works as a freelance consultant when time permits.
transform! europe is a network of 38 European organisations from 22 countries, active in the field of political education and critical scientific analysis, and is the recognised political foundation corresponding to the Party of the European Left (EL).
This cooperative project of independent non-profit organisations, institutes, foundations, and individuals intends to use its work in contributing to peaceful relations among peoples and a transformation of the present world.