Calamandrei e l’Europa: lezioni ad uso del (fragile) cittadino globale, recensione a P. Calamandrei, Questa nostra Europa, People, Gallarate, 2020

According to Piero Calamandrei, federalism is functional to the preservation of peace among peoples: this is why the Florentine jurist, just after the end of the Second world war, strove for the inclusion in the Italian Republican Constitution of a clause that would have allowed sovereignty limitations in favor of a supranational level of government and for the start of a European federalizing process to be completed in a reasonably short time. The first objective was achieved, while the second one had to deal with the cowardice of those who preferred functionalism rather than federalism. To this day, we are still paying the price of that watered-down compromise: if the EU seems to hardly plod through the pandemic, it is also because of the limited competencies that a hermaphroditic entity – neither federal State nor international organization – may exercise. Calamandrei’s reflections on Europe and federalism have been recently reproposed in a beautiful book published by “People”, whose reading is capable of providing confirmations to europeist spirits and, at the same time, of shaking eurosceptics’ certainties: in order to answer the complex problems posed by an interconnected world, we must look to (the governance of) interdependence, rather than to independence.