The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE ) and the Greens at the European Parliament, have asked for a public debate in plenary session, to discuss the freedom of press in Italy, according to Article 7 of the Treaty which provides for liberty and democracy in Member States. In this context, there will be first a mini plenary session in the Parliament in Brussels on 7 October. One week later, by October 14 the political groups will present their resolutions on the subject and the issue will be discussed in plenary, in Strasburg, the week of October 19.

Promoter of the debate has been MEP Antonio Di Pietro leader of the party Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values). From the practical point of view the issue, has no substance per se and will not yield any practical results. Politically, this action works against European integration and against the reputation of the European institutions. At the end of the day, however, the entire affair may well turn in favour of the Italian Prime Minister under accusation Silvio Berlusconi since there is no essence in the accusations, only finger pointing, and his Parliamentarians are well aware of the real situation while ALDE and the Greens have little knowledge, if any, of how complicated and obscure manipulations of the Italian left are.

At a first sight, this action targets Silvio Berlusconi for his publishing company ‘Mondadori’. In Italy, however, two other even bigger publishing groups, ‘L’Espresso’ of Carlo De Benedetti, and the group ‘Rizzoli’ which publishes ‘Corriere della Serra,’ are active and in tough competition with ‘Mondadori.’

The requested debate will bring at the level of the European Parliament internal political disputes of Member States, and certainly will create a bad precedent. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, a political personality originating from the left, said that last Friday, when he received Italian Members of the European Parliament at Quirinale in Rome, that the European Parliament is not the place to resolve disputes among political parties in Member States and is not a place to appeal against decisions of the national Parliaments.
On October 2 in an interview with ‘Il Giornale’ on the same issue, MEP Mario Mauro told Alessandro Carpettini, “it is not the Italian government at stake, as the left hopes, but the credibility of the European Union.”
To realize the motives and the reasons behind this seemingly innocent intervention, one should look at the visible and invisible protagonists and actors staging the show. The political aspect of the issue stems from the countless efforts of the Italian left to undermine the government of Silvio Berlusconi. Failing to succeed on the national ground, the Italian left is now attempting to bring the confrontation to the European level and try their luck, counting on the help of the Socialists. It seems however that the leader of the Socialist group in the European Parliament Martin Schultz, an astute and experienced German politician, ‘did not buy’ the idea, leaving the attack against Berlusconi to be staged by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) led by Guy Verhofstadt, and the Greens. Whether Guy Verhofstadt was fully aware of all facets of this amazing story and what is hiding behind the initiative of Antonio Di Pietro is questionable. Italy is one of the most politicized countries of the world and unless one has deep knowledge of the people, the mentality and the Italian political “retroscena,” past and present, he cannot be sure of what the full picture is.

Antonio Di Pietro is the leader of a small party, “Italia dei Valori” (Italy of Values), marginal to Italian politics, which makes part of the ALDE group. Apparently, the initiative of Di Pietro against Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, leader of “Partito della Liberta” a leading member party of the European People’s Party group who recorded a landslide victory in the last general election in Italy is deeply political. However, despite the Italian left which through Di Pietro and by using Guy Verhofstadt and and his ALDE group will attempt to damage Silvio Berlusconi, there is a possible second reading to this story.

Antonio Di Pietro, in his capacity of Public Prosecutor of Italy in the early nineties, was the initiator of the operation ‘Mani Pulite’ (Clean hands) an operation which unveiled the biggest political-financial scandal ever revealed in Italy, known with the code name ‘tangentopili,’ which turned the country upside-down politically and financially. In this context it is interesting to consider the possible influence in this matter of Carlo De Benedetti who now controls ‘L’Espresso’ publishing group, a close friend of the sworn enemy and competitor of Silvio Berlusconi, Rupert Murdoch. The two friends, De Benedetti and Murdoch, it seems that have common business interests in Italian television with the “Sky satellite TV” which is a competitor of the “Mediaset” TV network owned by Silvio Berlusconi.

For the record, in 1993, when Italy was under the constellation of ‘tangentopili,’ Carlo De Benedetti had then testified with a memorandum to the then Public prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro. In his memo, De Benedetti has reportedly admitted payments of ten billion Italian lire (five million Euro) to the political parties of the government formation for obtaining a business deal with the state owned Poste Italiane (Italian Post) but contrarily to many others who at the time ended up in jail for much less, this case never went on trial. Indeed, ‘tangentopoli’ begun from a € 400 bribe received by Mario Chiesa, a politician of the Italian Socialist Party for awarding a tender to a waste collecting small company in Milan.

Coming back from the glorious days of ‘tangentopoli;’ one issue that still remains obscure is why Antonio Di Pietro has all of a sudden chosen to move from the judicial to politics. Thus, from a leading personality of Europe in the area of justice and rights, Di Pietro become a picturesque political figure, trying unsuccessfully to penalize the political life of Europe with finger pointing and demonization of entrepreneurial activities, reminding the Lenininst practices of the twenties.