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“This is exactly what I brought to Europe: a sense of limits and realism, an awareness that each provision drawn up by the European institutions has a direct impact on the lives of citizens, families and businesses.”

Telos: “Some of the political balances have changed in the European Parliament.” This was your statement after the vote for a new European College of Commissioners. What has this change consisted in now and in the recent past?

Nicola Procaccini: There has clearly been a significant shift in the political balances of the European Parliament, a Parliament that today, more than in the previous legislature, is characterised by variable majorities and an orientation to the right. The absence of a stable majority highlights how alliances form based on the specific content of each measure. There is no true majority constraint, and there actually has not been in the past five years either because majorities form based on content and can vary for each vote. There has no doubt been a significant strengthening of the role and weight of the ECR, with Brothers of Italy which has gone from having five to twenty-four MEPs, making it one of the largest delegations. This increase has given the ECR greater political sway and has boosted the growth of European Conservatives. All of this has allowed the ECR to move into prominent positions, such as the vice presidencies of the European Commission and Parliament, as well as the chairmanship of some Parliamentary Committees. There has evidently been a marked pivot to the right within the European Parliament and a rejection of policies considered overly ideological, like those associated with the Green Deal. This orientation is the expression of the vote of European citizens, which points in two specific directions. One is toward the refusal to continue to plunder the competences of the national States; another goes against the fiercely ideological approach connected to EU policies. This new situation has also impacted the composition of the EU Commission, formed by respecting the Member States’ prerogative to nominate their own commissioner. Another equally significant element, the shift of consensus toward the centre-right, a government force in many States, is creating a similar shift to the right within the European Council, formed of the governments of the twenty-seven EU states.

The European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament play key roles in the EU decision-making process, but they often have very different points of view. Between political power and representation, who counts more?

The current EU structure shows a clear need for a rebalancing of powers between the institutions, putting democratic representation and Member States’ sovereignty back in the centre. The European Parliament should count more, whereas today the real decision-making power lies in the hands of the European Commission and Council, even though the Parliament is the only body directly elected by citizens. Often the positions of these three bodies are not perfectly aligned. This has a technical-political explanation, a result of the mechanism whereby these institutions are formed. Whereas the Parliament is an expression of the vote of citizens, who are called to the polls every five years, the Council is made up of the Heads of government of the twenty-seven EU States, which change based on the individual elections that take place periodically in the various nations. Likewise, the Commission has twenty-seven commissioners appointed by the individual States’ governments. It is a delicate balance that, as is easy to see, often leads to unaligned positions. This is why the European Commission gets accused of wielding too much power without a true mandate from the people and of functioning as an unelected government that often promotes ideological policies. In trying to create balances and get everything to fit together, often what counts most is who has the executive and the legislative power at the same time, so the Commission, at the expense of popular representation which is an expression of citizens’ vote, i.e. the Parliament, but also the European Council. In our conservative view, the Council should have more weight and importance because it is also a direct expression of the will of the people. We conservatives defend a confederal vision of the EU, which means giving greater weight and importance to the nations. A vision faithful to the original idea of Europe as a group of nations that do a few, important things together and allowing the individual Member States to do the rest. However, the risk is that the current mechanism could degenerate, concentrating too much, real, power in the hands of elite technocrats led by the European Commission.

Do the recent political choices of the EU move in the direction of restoring global competitiveness? For example, in many areas we have seen, regarding the Pharma Package proposed by the Commission, a weakening of the ability to attract investments in this strategic sector. As a member of the ENVI Committee in the previous legislature, what do you think of the compromise reached in Parliament?

The issue of the competitiveness of the EU production system is strategic to the future of the EU itself, which is having to face significant challenges to maintain and improve its international competitiveness. These challenges include the need for technological innovation, infrastructure modernisation, a reduction in bureaucracy and the strengthening of industrial production. To restore competitiveness, the EU needs to not only invest in research and innovation, it must bolster the Single Market by removing internal barriers and facilitating the free circulation of goods, services, capital and people. It should also support strategic production chains by investing in key sectors like energy, digitisation and the production of strategic goods to reduce its dependence on imports. Naturally, political regulations need to be reformed to streamline bureaucracy and foster digitisation for companies and public administrations. As for the policies relating to the Pharma Package, I don’t think they are enough to restore global competitiveness. We need more balanced policies that support innovation and investments in the pharmaceutical sector while ensuring equal access to medicines for all European citizens. Although the reform was aimed at improving access to medicines and simplifying procedures, the changes made do not adequately address the worries expressed by businesses in this sector. Pharmaceutical companies have criticised the new bureaucratic conditions and the reduced patent protections, believing that they harm European competitiveness compared to countries like the US and China, which offer better incentives for research and innovation. I therefore call for a review of European policies to promote greater competitiveness and attract investment in the pharmaceutical industry.

First you were a Terracina city councillor, then you were mayor for eight years. In 2019 you made the leap to Brussels where you are a second-term MEP and co-president of the ECR group. Today what is your relationship to your local area and what did you bring to Europe from your long experience as a local administrator?

My link to my local area has never been broken. Actually, it has become even more important to my work in the European Parliament. You can’t be a good European policymaker if you don’t start by listening to citizens, to the real needs of local communities. As mayor, I learned that ideologies are not very useful if they are not transformed into concrete solutions: you have to offer real, daily, responses to people’s needs. I carry that concreteness with me every day in Brussels and in Strasburg. To Europe I have brought the vision of who knows that the institutions cannot cut themselves off from reality. Here, they often talk about regulations and directives without really knowing what they mean on the field. I know what it means to have to deal with problems like bureaucracy that strangles businesses, lack of infrastructure or environmental management in complex territories.
This is why I try to offer a voice that defends the real interests of citizens, businesses and local administrations, what local areas really need. It is a vision that I share with many of my colleagues at the ECR group: a Europe that respects identity and local specificities and that does not demand the imposition of models that are supposed to work everywhere.
In a nutshell, I have a sense of duty towards a real community, that placed its trust in me first as mayor and today as an MEP. And with each decision I make here in Brussels, I always try to ask myself: do the citizens need this? My relationship with my homeland, with Terracina and more generally with my province and region, is the compass I use every day. This is exactly what I brought to Europe: a sense of limits and realism, an awareness that each provision drawn up by the European institutions has a direct impact on the lives of citizens, families and businesses.

Marco Sonsini