Gianni Pittella: make globalization work for the middle

Italy’s Gianni Pittella, leader of the socialists and democrats party group in the European Parliament, says the problems of Europe’s center-left were years in the making.

“After the financial crisis we were asleep,” he admitted to POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook over espresso in his Brussels office.

Pittella can’t afford to wallow in his party’s disastrous showing in the French presidential election though. There’s more hell on the horizon.

The French socialists must fight parliamentary elections in June despite not finishing first in a single constituency in the first round of presidential voting. UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, facing voters on June 8, is unable to beat “don’t know” in some opinion surveys when Britons are asked who is their preferred Prime Minister.

Whether or not Martin Schulz can oust Angela Merkel in Germany’s September election, Pittella knows there is an unavoidable battle kicking off for the heart of European social democracy.

“There is a huge cleavage in society between open and closed, universalism and identity. You see that in France,” he said.

While socialists must work to defeat Marine Le Pen, “Macron is not the future of left,” Pittella insisted.

So what is the future of the left?

Social democracy is no longer a simple compromise between labor and capital, he said. “Today both (labor and capital) are mobile and volatile.”

The very wealthy move themselves and their money because they can. The very poor and victims of conflict and disaster move because they must.

In between is a middle class that is not mobile. Indeed it often lacks the skills, networks, or cash to take up the opportunities of EU achievements like the Schengen zone, single market, and euro currency.

Pittella’s policy prescription for that immobility is to make globalization work for the middle. “You can’t stop the train, but you have to steer it and decide where it’s going,” he said.

Top of Pittella’s political checklist is avoiding extremism. He says the center-left “must not give up radicalism of the values,” but it can’t afford to ape populists either.

On the economic front Pittella said it will take radical efforts just to complete long-stated wishes of the EU institutions.

The first effort should be towards governing the market, he said: “This we can only do at the European level.”

His economic governance wish list is long: A Eurozone finance minister, “forcing fiscal capacity for the euro”, a banking union, a financial transactions tax, and stronger clampdowns on special tax deals for companies and tax havens.

The second economic front is ending austerity policies in Europe. “We want to destroy the fiscal compact,” he said, referring a fiscal stability treated signed by all EU countries except Czechia and the United Kingdom in 2011.

Pittella is also adamantly opposed to the EU granting China ‘market economy status, a debate likely to come to a head before the June EU-China summit.’

His position is driven by fear as much as ideology: “If we lose more industry in Europe, that is a lot of unemployment. A lot of disoriented and angry people,” he said.

If you think it will take a powerful central figure to achieve these policy goals, you’ll need to look elsewhere from Pittella.

In a case of leading from behind, Pittella wants his party to be more hybrid in nature: part traditional party, part grassroots movement. “I am not nostalgic for centralized parties. I am in favour of a party community in which everyone feels a part of the common mission.”