For too long Italian politics has been hostage to a sterile bipolarism. “The ‘centre-right’ and ‘centre-left’ face each other without innovating, intent on defending rents of position rather than imagining the future. Thus the system has run aground, worn down by broken promises and downward compromises, while populisms have conquered the lever of power: the right of veto .

Too often the ‘golden share’ of decisions has ended up in the hands of those who can only say no.

Carlo Calenda ‘s tweet yesterday captured this impasse well: ‘From the Draghi agenda to the Taverna agenda. From the liberal democratic pole to Bettini’s tent. Also no. ”
A sharp rejection opposed to the shortcuts of populism and nostalgic comebacks, and at the same time a call to stay the course of a reformist and modernising agenda.

Today Luigi Marattin, interviewed by La Stampa, picked up that thread. The secretary of the Liberal Democratic Party relaunches the idea of an autonomous platform, disengaged from the old alignments, able to present itself at the 2027 elections with a clear message: not against someone, but for something. Not yet another justicialism or yet another protest, but a proposal based on pragmatism, responsibility and a European spirit.

Here a broader passage comes into play. As editor Piercamillo Falasca wrote here in L’Europeista , Mario Draghi ‘s speech at the Rimini Meeting had the force of a merciless diagnosis: Europe no longer counts if it only relies on its own economic weight, and without common political instruments it is doomed to irrelevance.

Draghi, however, did not limit himself to the diagnosis, but indicated ways out: a truly accomplished single market, continental investment in research and technology, common European debt for projects of scale, shared defence. An agenda that he himself called ‘pragmatic Europeanism‘.

It is not, however, a question of imagining Draghi as the leader of a new movement. As Falasca recalled, the former central banker’s task is another: to keep open the gash that his words have produced, offering vision and inspiration. Within that gash must be inserted new or renewed political forces capable of building a concrete alternative to bipolarity and populism.

For this reason, in the editorial staff of L’Europeista and elsewhere, there are those who welcome the opening of Calenda and Marattin and raise the challenge: to unite Action, the Liberal Democratic Party and Drin Drin in a liberal, reformist, pro-European container.

The same container of which – needless to say – the president of the Einaudi Foundation Giuseppe Benedetto has been talking about for months. A common house that focuses on real issues: energy, with the courage to relaunch nuclear power; institutions, with the restoration of Article 68 of the Constitution to restore dignity to Parliament; more balanced justice , fairer taxation, development policies designed for the next twenty years, not for the next twenty-four hours.

The 2027 elections seem far away, but time is running out: building an alternative requires method, patience and vision. Calenda has set the perimeter, Marattin has lit the beacon, Draghi has offered the compass.

Now it is up to us, militants and pro-European citizens, to demand and build this third way. Because the country no longer needs leaders who demand applause, but a political community that knows how to offer Italians not the ‘least worst’, but the best possible.