A right wing that wants to live up to this historical phase must rid itself of a misunderstanding that has produced much rhetoric and very little real strength. It is not enough to utter the word sovereignty to be sovereign, it is not enough to invoke the nation to truly defend the national interest, it is not enough to agitate Italian pride to restore Italy’s role in the world. Serious politics begins when words are measured against reality. And reality today says something simple, even brutal: in the century of great blocs, continental powers, technological wars, energy dependencies, global platforms and new imperial competitions, no European nation can be truly independent on its own. It can tell itself this, it can turn it into slogans, it can build a consolatory mythology on it. But when one moves from propaganda to history, from flag to force, from nostalgia to decision, the conclusion becomes inevitable. To be sovereign, one must be European.

That is why, personally, I do not experience Europe as a concession made against my political culture. I live it exactly the opposite. Precisely because I recognise myself in a secular, national, realist, governing Right, I cannot choose to be anti-European without betraying that very idea of the Right. If a right-wing means a sense of statehood, responsibility, historical continuity, defence of the national interest and the ability to stand in reality without getting drunk on slogans, then an Italian right-wing, today, can only be European. Not out of obedience to a fashion, not out of devotion to an apparatus, not out of conformism. But because Europe is the only dimension in which Italian sovereignty can still have body, strength and future.

A European National Right

Europe is not the opposite of the homeland. It is the geopolitical dimension within which European homelands can continue to live in history. It is the natural space in which a nation like Italy can still count for something, not as a sentimental province of a world that no longer exists, but as part of a civilisation capable of organising itself, defending itself, producing, competing and deciding. Sovereignty, today, does not live in solitude. It lives in scale. It lives in the ability not to depend on others for energy, for defence, for technology, for industry, for security, for infrastructure, for raw materials. A nation that does not control any of this may well proclaim itself free. But it risks being free only in language, while in substance it depends on the decisions of others.

A right wing should be the first to understand this, because when it is serious, it is not born to chase resentment. It is born to shape order. It is not born to shout at the world, but to govern it where it can, to resist it where it must, to protect a community within the harshness of history. A secular, European, national, institutional, cultured, governing Right cannot reduce itself to the caricature of permanent protest. It must build ruling classes, select responsibilities, recognise the hierarchy of competences, assume the burden of decision-making. It must speak to the people, certainly, but without turning the people into an alibi for lowering the level of politics.

The decisive point is this: being national today means being European. First of all, for historical realism. Italy is no less Italy if it recognises that it belongs to the European nation. On the contrary, it understands itself better. Our identity is not born in a closed room. It was born within Rome, within Christianity, within the Mediterranean, within law, within humanism, within the Renaissance, within the wars and reconstructions of the continent. Italy is profoundly Italian because it is profoundly European. To separate the two is to amputate our own history.

The European nation is not a recent invention, born in treaties, summits, or procedures. It has existed for centuries, perhaps millennia, as a space of civilisation, as a common memory, as a shared cultural landscape. It existed before contemporary institutions. It existed in medieval universities, cathedrals, Roman law, Greek philosophy, Christianity, empires, kingdoms, trade, wars, literature, art, music, science, cities. It is a plural, not a uniform identity. It does not erase French, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Poles, Greeks. It contains them within a larger historical family.

That is why Europe should not be thought of first and foremost as a bureaucracy. It should be thought of as geopolitical destiny. As a continent. As a civilisation. As a possible power. The question is not to fall in love with its slowness, its timidity, its grey languages, its exhausting compromises. The question is to understand that without a strong European dimension, the nations of the continent do not become freer. They become weaker. More exposed. More blackmailable. More marginalised. The self-sufficient small country is a nice political postcard image, but it does not hold up in the face of the strength of continental blocs.

Here lies the misunderstanding of certain anti-European rhetoric. It says sovereignty, but often produces dependency. It says nation, but consigns the nation to irrelevance. It says freedom, but does not build the concrete instruments of freedom. Because political freedom is not just feeling, it is not just memory, it is not just belonging. It is also steel, energy, technology, shipyards, armies, ports, networks, industries, satellites, universities, currency, diplomacy. Without all this, sovereignty remains a beautiful and empty word.

Sovereignty is not solitude

Sovereign is he who decides. But to decide one must have strength. And to have strength, in today’s world, one must have size. This is the truth that an adult right should fearlessly assume. There is nothing less conservative, in a profound sense, than condemning one’s homeland to weakness out of loyalty to a romantic image of the past. To preserve means to give continuity. And a community only lives on if it knows how to adapt its historical forms to the new reality. The Italian nation is not preserved by isolating it from European destiny. It is preserved by preventing it from being crushed by the new geography of world power.

The world before us is not a multilateral salon. It is a field of forces. The United States is defending its own interests, China is building its own global projection, Russia is using war as a political tool, India is growing as an autonomous power, Turkey is playing on several tables, the large digital platforms wield immense power over societies, often greater than that of many states. In this scenario, to think that Italy can exercise full independence on its own is not courage. It is illusion. The courage lies in building a Europe capable of holding its own.

This does not mean dissolving nations into an indistinct abstract construct. It means the opposite. It means defending them within a stronger architecture. Europe must not erase Italy, France, Germany, Spain or Poland. It must allow each of these nations not to become a periphery of the world. The real alternative is not between nation and Europe, but between a European nation capable of standing in history and a solitary nation forced to suffer the history made by others.

A secular and governing Right should fight for this idea. Not for a moralistic, pedagogical, administrative Europe that looks down on peoples and thinks to correct them. But for a political, historical, concrete Europe, capable of defending its borders, its industry, its civilisation, its security, its technological freedom, its energy autonomy. A Europe that is not afraid of the word power, because without power there is no peace, no freedom, no sovereignty. There is only well-behaved dependency.

The point is not to become anti-American, anti-Atlantic or locked into a new continental self-sufficiency. The point is to become adults. An ally who cannot stand up is a protégé. And a protégé may be defended, but is hardly ever respected. Europe must remain within the West, but not as its comfortable periphery. It must stay there as a subject, as a pillar, as a party capable of contributing and deciding. This too is Italy’s national interest. Because an Italy inserted in a stronger Europe also carries more weight in relations with allies.

European sovereignty, then, is not an ideological luxury. It is the material condition of national sovereignty. If Europe does not produce technology, it will depend on who produces it. If it does not defend its borders, it will depend on those who defend them for it. If it does not invest in its own industry, it will suffer the supply chains of others. If it does not control its own energy, it will remain vulnerable to blackmail. If it does not form ruling classes capable of thinking big, it will be governed by administrators of decadence. And a right wing that accepts this would betray its own historical function.

The European nation is the deep name for this awareness. Sovereignty is not taken away from nations if it is taken to the scale at which it can still function. It is taken away when nations remain too small to actually exercise it.

There is a right wing that should understand this before the others. A right of the sense of state, of historical continuity, of responsibility, of leadership, of political culture. A Right that does not confuse the square with destiny, anger with vision, immediate consensus with long-term construction. Such a Right does not fear Europe, because it does not experience it as a diminution of the homeland. It experiences it as the larger field in which the homeland can once again express strength.

Italy needs this posture. It needs a right wing that does not just defend symbols, but builds real power. That is not content with evoking sovereignty, but asks where it is produced, where it is financed, where it is defended, where it is decided. That it does not think of Europe as an external nuisance, but as the place where politics can be brought up to the level of history. Because if politics remains small while the world becomes gigantic, the country does not win. Powerlessness wins.

Being European, then, does not mean renouncing Italy. It means preventing Italy from becoming marginal. It means knowing that national destiny is not defended with closure, but with power. It means recognising that the homeland is not a relic to be guarded with fear, but a legacy to be carried into the future. And the future, for a European nation, can only be European. Not out of weakness, but out of strength. Not out of obedience, but out of independence. Not out of fashion, but out of historical necessity.

This is the real political challenge. Remain prisoners of nostalgia or build a new sovereignty. To exchange isolation for freedom or to understand that freedom, today, needs a continental scale. To continue to speak of nation as if the world were yesterday’s or to recognise that the Italian nation lives within the broader European nation. A secular, national, European and governing Right should choose the second path without hesitation. The destiny of a national Right today is Europe.