Franco Frattini papers for Quirinale

A few days ago, a few steps from the Pantheon, halfway between the Chamber and the Senate, a group of Parliamentarians from the Five Star Movement was shown. A kind of little carbonara meeting (also carbonara on a plate by some diners), between digression to relieve stress and analysis to understand what to do. At a certain point, Quirinale’s tuttonomy begins, and the mood is definitely at odds with the current premiere. It is he who was buried by the pioneers with the phrase: “Instead of my cyclist, it is better, Frattini.” How can Silvio Berlusconi’s former foreign minister, albeit lukewarm, have admirers even in the anti-party? Frattini is a name that’s often taken up on boards these days, pronounced almost wisely, because it probably wouldn’t be the first choice, but you wouldn’t want to send him to the slaughterhouse these days they were. They were bombarded with critical names such as Letizia Moratti or Marcello Pera.

Matteo Salvini met him at the end of last year, at least twice, to exchange ideas about the international situation, and then heard him on the phone in the past few weeks. “With Matteo there is a good relationship, with more Giorgetti,” he told of Lega, the party that toyed with the idea of ​​his candidacy for mayor of Rome before his polite rejection and venturing into the insane campaign of Enrico Michetti. And who is now flirting with the suggestion of going into the mound, one of the hypotheses, perhaps among the most realistic, after the rider has taken the long-overdue step back and in the event that my drag does not take off.

Since leaving Parliament in 2013, Frattini has not followed the political project of many of his colleagues, going as far as possible for another round of fencing, but has chosen to back down by taking on a role, albeit still relatively young, in the Reserve of the Republic. Romano, turning 65 in March, graduated in law, a name that is winning unexpected approval throughout the parliamentary arc. President of the Sioi, the Italian Association of the International Organization, which according to an inside source has “managed in recent years in an exemplary bipartisan style”, Frattini in recent years has cultivated a dense network of relations, in pursuit of work and patience, without ever walking with tears to get rid of the iron Berlusconian mark . It is also for this reason that part of the forced world today accuses him of abandoning Berlusconi in a difficult moment, between the arrival of Monti and the obligatory agreement with Bersani after the lack of victory, and of getting off the wagon even more because he is convinced that his activity as a hard-line politician has ended due to disagreements with his boss, with whom relations have not been severed completely. Of course the blue captain was almost not forgotten when his young protégé entered the good graces of Giorgio Napolitano, who saw in him a point of certainty in the chaos of that massive summer of 2011 when the jockey was at Palazzo Chigi while everything around him collapsed. The former president was not the only one who saw the foreign minister as a reference. In a 2008 letter made famous by WikiLeaks, then-US ambassador Ronald Spoogli wrote in Washington: “Berlusconi consistently rejects the strategic advice of his foreign minister, frustrated, under-resourced and increasingly irrelevant.” Behind the annoyance of a weak political position, respect for rationality and unheard of insight.

A similar appreciation was received, given that the thread connecting it to the United States was never broken. In a lecture in 2016, he explained to students listening to him in the upcoming US elections, in a way that one attendee recalled, “she seemed to support Hillary Clinton’s reasons far more than Donald Trump, who seemed skeptical.” On the one hand, the Atlanticist is an important figure in Frattini’s political work, whom Israel also considers a friend, on the other hand, in a system of relations that has gradually expanded over the years. But Frattini also reassures the Northern League: good relations with Russian diplomacy (he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples by Moscow), although being pro-European and convinced federalist, he recognized some of the reasons for the countries of the Visegrad bloc. But not to succumb to populism, because the invitation to the leader of the League was always to “get to know them better”, “to realize that they have interests at odds with those of Italy.”

“He is a great commissar, with all the advantages and all the disadvantages of the case,” explains a diplomatic source, who tells how Frattini became famous for maintaining an extensive network of international relations: “Of course, he had some difficulties in making his Berlusconi affiliation forgotten, but over time he succeeded in all ” . His biography also tells of obstacles and dubious choices: the minister when Italy joined the coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq, he is the author of a highly criticized law on conflicts of interest, and the affiliation with Freemasonry he vehemently denied, which gave him some criticism. A headache when he was appointed European Commissioner for Justice. However, Felucca explains, “Fratini’s advantage is the combination of international image and procedural legal competence derived from being an administrative judge.”

When Luigi Di Maio was elected to head the Council of State last week, he was among the first to congratulate him. Until some time ago, Frattini was wary of the provisions of the 5-star movement, which he held privately. In recent years, thanks to his role in Sioi and the arrival of the former political leader to Farnesina, relations have become more intense. Last December 21, he was in the ministry at the invitation of his successor to attend the traditional conference of ambassadors, and together they shared the stage of the Youth Prize of Italy organized by Louis, and among the five stars there is a closer relationship than was shown. in public.

On the other hand, Frattini and Grilismo have already touched upon Link Campus, the private university where he leads the Faculty of Law and which was the incubator of the M5s 2018 election campaign, providing the yellow and green government with a minister, Elisabetta Trenta, and a deputy on the left, Emanuela del Rey. At the University on Via Aurelia two years ago, he was photographed next to Massimo D’Alema and Reno Fisichella, a photo that tells us more than just presenting Bruno Vespa’s book in which they were the speakers. With D’Alema, the relationship is one of mutual respect, and while Frattini was a member of Forza Italia, news of the friction or controversy between the two was hard to trace. One of the many relationships on the left of the premier, among them that with Enrico Letta, who had charted a similar path before he was called up to lead the Democratic Party.

The relationship with Fisichella, from which the expected complex jubilee match will end in three years, is just one of the many relationships that Frattini can boast of in the Vatican. He is known in Korea as the “Favorite Candidate” by Oltretevere. A relationship has been patiently built over the years, first with Foreign Minister Angelo Sodano, and then with his successor, Tarcisio Bertone. With the current relationship, Pietro Parolin, the relationship was solidified in Farnesina’s time, when the Cardinal was Under Secretary of State and Head of the China Office, a period of very close contacts between the two. An inside source clarifies that “if Salvini is the architect of his election, the relationship, which is not excellent at the moment, can be repaired.” In those parts it is still mentioned that the leader of the Northern League, on December 8, 2018 at a demonstration in Piazza del Popolo, was lopsided in saying that “our reference is John Paul II”. Disrespect towards Bergoglio, a scar that never fully healed. In the Vatican, Salvini was completely unreliable, when he requested an audience that Paul Gallagher, the Secretary of State, and only third in the Catholic Church’s secular command line, received an audience, without a High Bishop declaring his support for the head of the Church. league.

Thus an Atlantean, pro-European, friendly to Israel but well-connected in Russia, an expert in international affairs and a deep connoisseur of the state machine, pedigrees read in this way should leave no room for doubt. However, critics remember one of the most bitter defeats. The candidate to lead NATO, his star quickly fell out, and eventually the United States and Germany (then led by Obama and Merkel) preferred Denmark’s Stoltenberg, not wanting Berlusconi’s emergence at the head of NATO. Eight years have passed since then, many things have changed. First of all, what pleases the Cavalier today may not necessarily be a counterweight. exactly the contrary.