Barbara Spinelli MEP. Flickr/GUENGL. Some rights reserved.Lorenzo Marsili: In your response to Verhofstadt, you have argued that before considering any constitutional change of the European institutions we need to invest in policies capable of restoring citizens’ trust towards the European project. Failing that, any project of Treaty reform will likely be hindered by the profound mistrust towards the EU.
This two-steps approach is also at the core of the manifesto of DIEM25 – stabilisation of the Eurozone first, and then constitutional reform. Can you tell us what kind of reforms you think are necessary to recover trust towards the European project?
Barbara Spinelli: If we really care to defend the European project, it is completely unreasonable to start institutional revisions before having radically changed the policies that brought us to this multi-faced crisis, so similar to the one of the 30s, in the first place. And the root-cause is not only in the EU's economic-financial make-up but also in its democratic failure, the disintegration of societies, and a loss of orientation and hope experienced collectively by European citizens.
