Speech by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the end-of-year ceremony to exchange the season’s greetings with the representatives of Institutions, political forces and civil society  

I would like to extend my thanks to the President of the Senate for his considerations and for the season’s wishes that I reciprocate with my warmest greetings also for the President of the Chamber of Deputies, the President of the Council of Ministers, the President of the Constitutional Court and all the people present.

In these days approaching the New Year, contradictory feelings cross our minds: on the one hand, the need to share our hope for a future of tranquility and peace, together with the prospects that scientific discoveries offer to humankind. On the other hand, deep concern for a time characterized by war and violence that render the horizon of the whole world uncertain.

In the past few days, when meeting with our ambassadors and the accredited diplomatic corps, I had the opportunity to dwell on the points of crisis that characterize the global scenario and on the uncertainty raised by the disappearance of the international equilibrium established since World War II. That equilibrium no longer exists, and a new order is hard to establish.   

Russia’s attack on Ukraine was followed by the outburst of new fronts of crisis, in a concatenation of events that extends the conflict from Europe to the Middle East, quickly multiplying the theatres of war. It would be short-sighted not to see the elements interweaving this tragic situation into one. 

It is no longer time for confrontation between two blocks, what was once called the “cold war”, when the race in military armaments, and especially nuclear armaments, was kept in check through an intense political and diplomatic initiative capable of avoiding the danger of all-out war.

Today, conflicts prevail. Politics and diplomacy often seem to be marginalized in the choice of armaments made by those who started the war. Supernational institutions are thus weakened.

Our new generations show surprise and disorientation when faced with the images and language of war.

We need to make an in-depth reflection on the damage that this emotional deviance can produce in the long term on the men and women of the future, their feelings, their perception of reality and on the way of organizing their coexistence.

I don’t mean to refer only to the populations that are experiencing the wounds of conflicts on their own skin, but to all of us. Because the images of war disseminated sow a deep sense of fear, hostility, divisiveness, hate, and barriers of all sorts also among those who are not directly involved. 

Getting accustomed to living with hate risks spreading it and making it inextinguishable.

Unfortunately, something has already changed. I believe there could be a real link between those feelings and the growth of violence around us, within our societies.

Cicero affirmed that history is a master of life. Yet, we are sometimes seized by the doubt that this master is not heeded as when, in the heart of Europe, we see the looming of ghosts that we thought had definitively disappeared.

We need to react in order to firmly and resolutely reassert the reasons of peace, civilized development, coexistence, and a free, mutually supportive and interdependent world. These are goals that the Government has committed to achieve – as it did also in its effective presidency of the G7 – in the pursuit of dialogue and cooperation, with special attention to the Countries of the Global South.

There is no turning back; we cannot surrender to disorder and permanent conflict.

Peace and cooperation are always possible.

On this front we now measure the vitality and strength of our democracies, of our legal culture, of the values of liberty, justice, and equality that are the building blocks with which we built our peaceful coexistence.

Because even our societies in the Western world which, for many decades, were the strongest cornerstones and bulwarks of these values, now seem to be challenged by insidious risk factors.

We are witnessing ubiquitous phenomena of an evident and progressive polarization that touches many aspects of our coexistence.

It appears increasingly difficult to preserve a space for dialogue and mediation within societies that seem to be prey to diverging centrifugal forces with a dangerous reduction in opportunities for dialogue, cooperation and sharing.

It is a dynamic that does not only concern politics but pre-exists and outstretches it. It touches upon social, economic, cultural and even ethical spheres.

The pluralism of ideas, and the intertwining of different opinions are the soul of a democracy.

This principle is the cornerstone of Western democracies and societies.

Increasingly often, we witness the onset of a radicalized approach that pretends to simplify things by refusing to listen and reducing complexity down to the categories of friend/enemy.

When conflicts are triggered that wound and rack a society; when there is an attempt to replace the force of reason with the violence and arrogance of the stronger; when growing and unbearable inequalities are fueled and justified, it is time to think and get back onto a constructive track.

The risk is to do away with spheres that are kept safe against the trend to create an unbridgeable breach between opinions:

• on climate change and the environmental policies needed to limit it and thus protect the planet,
• on the value of science, of research, and the effectiveness of numerous vaccines that have saved millions of human lives from deadly or invalidating diseases.

Said issues, so delicate and decisive for the future, would require a serious and calm common reflection, and open to understanding every aspect, have instead become the bone of content. And even the reason for violence.

Conflicts fueled and amplified through the misleading and irresponsible use of social media at times become perverted instruments of division, acritical influencing, and the deliberate distortion of reality, thus contradicting their authentic role.

The breaches are numerous and widespread. And, as I recalled, they involve several spheres.

Concentrating enormous amounts of capital and the power of technology in the hands of a very restricted few, just like the concentrated control of data – that can be defined as the new oil of the digital era – determines a condition of grave risk.

The effects are self-evident. A few people – not only one, we dare to believe – with enormous financial resources and who earn more than 500 times the salary of a workman or an employee; big companies that dictate their own conditions to the market and – beyond borders and the authority of States and International Organizations – tend to avoid all regulation, starting with their tax obligations.

It seems that – as in a separate and parallel reality from the rest of humankind – wealth is pursued as an end in itself; but in fact, as an instrument of power much more than in the past because it enables people to be unbound by any effective public authority.

These phenomena are compounded by the fear of the emerging temptation to progressively void public authority, to the point of undermining the very idea of State as we have codified and known it across the centuries.

Let me make an example: a modern State is founded on the monopoly over the use of military force or of a currency. Well, these two pillars are now challenged by the prospect of progressively privatizing public powers, through the initiative of private financial powers capable of challenging the prerogatives of the State also on these two fronts. The owners of immense wealth have a de facto monopoly in various fundamental sectors and on building parallel private monetary circuits.

Who can guarantee that the aim of this transfer of power from the public to the private sphere is to assure the liberty of all? The security of all? The rights of all? That the common good is intended as the good of every person, no one excluded?

This guarantee now depends on a single condition: the endurance and the consolidation of democratic institutions, the only bulwark against the usurpers of sovereignty.

Let me recall the words with which Karl Popper underscored the need of liberty in order to avoid the abuse of power by a State and the need of a State in order to avoid us from eluding freely established rules by abusing that liberty.

Western democracies – especially in the aftermath of World War II – have assured a development capable of keeping together individual rights and collective interests in a framework of social cohesion, liberties, civil growth, and solidarity, also international, as is historically proven by the integration of our continent into the European Union.

What then progressively weakened this model in the eyes of part of our public opinions?

Some scholars have called it post-democracy.

Our public opinions are instilled with the doubt that democratic power is weak, inefficient, slow, and unfit to govern quick-paced evolutions. Or even that it is a penalizing factor in competing with non-democratic systems. It is odd and unrealistic to overlook the fact that in democracy decisions are made on the basis of the freely expressed consent of citizens, making them much sounder and more reliable.

We have to love democracy.

We have to take good care of it.

It is a guarantee of freedom, and it promotes well-being and development and the constant pursuit of peace. These are goals denied by authoritarian regimes, which are incapable of meeting the hopes of people and, in actual fact, are much less sound and strong than what they make themselves out to be.

It avoids conflicts and radicalizations artificially fueled by those who think it is the way of obtaining space and visibility, thus producing the desertification of civil fabric and giving free rein to adventures of all types.

I would like to tell our youths who will govern our future that the changes occurring around us are extremely fascinating: the options offered by digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and the idea of being permanently “connected” make us feel to be at the centre of the world. All this opens extraordinary, positive and priceless possibilities, on condition that we do not lose sight of our humanity.

And our humanity is primarily expressed through relationships and cohabiting with others, sharing, and forging communities.

Our democracies need this humanity, these relationships, and for a renewed participation to re-enliven and give value to the public sphere, to the community dimension.

This is the only challenging and tangible alternative to the lacerations in our societies: the senselessness, the disaffection, and the thousands of solitudes that crowd our cities.

It is through this lens that I see the growing and worrying phenomenon of abstentionism recorded in the rounds of elections held over the past few years.

A democracy without people would be a democracy of ghosts.

A weak democracy.

It is necessary to work to regain trust, primarily concentrating our efforts on rebuilding the relationship between the people and institutions.

Because the institutions thrive on the participation and commitment of individuals.

Democracy does not exhaust its role merely in procedures: it means commitment, passion, sense of community, and it requires a contribution in its decision-making at all levels.

This is another reason why it is necessary to support pluralism in the various branches of society as in the field of information, and not entrust only to market logics what is valuable for the quality of coexistence and for full citizenship.

We often talk of stability as a decisive factor in a Country’s acquired credibility and good reputation.

And, as we have said, stability is assured by efficient institutions.

By institutions capable of making timely decisions.

Through the citizens’ consent.

By a civil society that is capable of committing and growing, knowing that cohesion is nourished by work, and it is now encouraging to record a positive trend in employment rates.

But, even before that, there are other factors that are not to be underestimated: common and shared values, culture, the popular sentiments that identify us as a single people, bound by a common fate.

This “immaterial” heritage is precious for the moral unity that is the precondition for an orderly coexistence, for a strong Republic, for a stable Country that is prestigious worldwide.

These virtues have emerged in many a circumstance: when facing emergencies, when catastrophic events strike the Country, or in the dark years of terrorism or, more recently, when we gave proof of extraordinary solidarity in fighting the pandemic.

Just like a sinking stream, this heritage – consisting of our moral unity – surfaces in the most difficult times.

It has occurred several times throughout our history.

It is not only in our memory.

What does it concretely mean to respect and preserve this unity?

Firstly, it means living according to the Constitution as it now stands, keeping securely bound to its founding principles: liberty, equality, justice and solidarity – the inalienable rights of every individual.

It also means recognizing that there are national interests that require utmost convergence. For example, respecting international treaties and alliances, defending and assuring the security of our fellow-citizens and of strategic infrastructure, protecting the environment and making our territories safe. We cannot be divided with respect to these goals, which inevitably require long-term strategies and should therefore be pursued with a commitment that outlives parliamentary majorities and opposition parties.

We should always remember a fundamental issue: respecting institutions means respecting those who represent them. Similarly, those vested with institutional duties, starting with the President of the Republic, have the duty to exercise them knowing that institutions belong to everyone and that the service rendered aims to guarantee the dignity of all individuals, regardless of their political belonging.

We have effective examples of how this is not only possible but actually practiced every day, at all levels.

I recently saw it myself in the passion of the many mayors that I met at the general meeting of ANCI – the National Association of the Communes of Italy. Their different political belonging, the legitimate and prized differences in their cultural identities – that are the essence of democratic dialectics – do not hinder them from seeking and finding convergence and unity on some major issues, in the interest of citizens.  

This attitude, this treasure trove of values and feelings, is more widespread than is generally thought and I had the opportunity – also in the course of this year – to verify it personally on several occasions. It is the soul of so many of our communities. It enlivens so many expressions of civil society, the world of professional, business and labour associations – the channels for the participation and the construction of a common good through the precious element of dialogue.

We can call it – without falling prey to the excess of rhetoric – civil passion and sense of duty.

This is what we saw, for example, in our UNIFIL troops in Lebanon, despite their exposure to great risks.

I saw the same among many State and civil society Organizations. 

The sense of duty that requires that everyone working in institutions respect the limit of their role, without encroaching on someone else’s territory and without creating overlaps or conflicts.

The Republic thrives on this order. It needs to confide in people being able to see, through the behaviour and actions of the people in charge, harmony between institutions.

Also to be able to eliminate the sense of disorientation and uncertainty for the future that often emerges with respect to many aspects of life: on the job, for health care services, the prospects for youths, the international situation. These feelings are amplified in a climate characterized by a constant search for conflict. 

The wish that I would like to express for all of us who represent the different branches of this Italy of ours – is to be able to match up to our responsibilities. To be able to tackle them with the same commitment and the same confident determination with which so many of our citizens tackle their everyday difficulties and keep things afloat in their families and in our communities.

A merry Christmas and happy New Year to all.