Berlin, 16/11/2025 (II mandato)
Mr Federal President,
Madam President of the Bundestag,
Mr Chancellor,
Mr President of the Bundesrat,
Mr President of the Constitutional Court,
Mr President of the Volksbund,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Distinguished guests,
We are gathered here today in this solemn chamber to commemorate the fallen, the victims of war and violence.
People who fell into the abyss of history, into the traps set by other men.
The lives of individuals, peoples and nations are rife with hurdles and tragedies.
Sometimes they result from individual choices, but more often than not they result from the deliberate actions of others.
World War I left at least 16 million people dead, half of whom were civilians, as well as 20 million wounded and maimed.
World War II, which extended to the Pacific front, is estimated to have claimed some seventy million lives.
The number of casualties, broken down by single country, is staggering. And we should always bear in mind that we are talking about people, not mere figures.
How is it possible for all this to have happened? And that it may happen again?
How many more deaths will it take before we stop considering war as a means for solving disputes between states, which use it to arbitrarily dominate other peoples?
“Nie wieder”. “Never again”.
This is the expression the international community used to condemn the Holocaustof the Jews.
“Nie wieder” stands against “wieder”: “again”.
This is what we are witnessing.
War, again.
Racism, again.
Great inequalities, again.
Violence, again.
Aggression, again.
Today, it is a great honour for me to be here and to attend the German National Day of Mourning, to commemorate together the victims of conflict in the very year that marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The dead we remember here, the dead across the world felled by the violence of conflict, must concern each and every one of us, if we wish to be considered human beings.
Today, our gaze and our thoughts go to the victims of those tragedies.
From fallen soldiers to civilians, victims of that situation - war - which the German Basic Law and the Italian Constitution reject, putting to good use the great lesson learned from the tragic Second World War.
We come together on this day of remembrance and mourning, because remembering our shared history is a fundamental action for our relentless aspiration for peace.
The recollection of the atrocities man has perpetrated in the past, together with the deep sorrow for present-day atrocities, compel us to raise awareness: peace is not an ultimate goal, rather the result of a constant effort, based on the achievement of shared values and on the recognition that the human dignity of every single person, everywhere, is inviolable.
War has always sought to cast its dark shadow over humanity.
In the twentieth century, the development of the industrialisation of death transformed the tragedy of soldiers into the tragedy of peoples.
In the villages of Europe, in the cities destroyed by bombings, in the devastated countryside, millions of civilians became targets.
Deportations and genocides characterised World War II.
Since then, the face of war is no longer to be seen in that of the combatant only; ithas become the face of the child, of the mother, of the defenceless elderly person.
This is what is happening today in Kyiv and Gaza.
Total war does not demand just the defeat or surrender of the enemy, but their annihilation. An ever-increasing cruelty.
In the atomic era, one single gesture can wipe out a city and the very innocence of the world.
Theodor Heuss, the first President of the Federal Republic of Germany, countered all this with his “Mut zur Liebe”, the courage to love, and his project for a “living democracy”, warning that: “There is no freedom without humanity, and there is no peace without memory”.
Living democracy. It is a pivotal element in the relationship between the principle of authority and the principle of democracy.
Indeed, it is democracy that underpins and legitimises authority, overcoming the temptations of totalitarianism, which claim to be and represent everything.
For democracy is born from the very principle of freedom, which, in turn, is based on the universality of equality between people.
In the post-war period, the establishment of the United Nations and the adoption ofthe Geneva Conventions sparked hope for a peace supported by law, reaffirming a fundamental principle: the civilian population must be protected under all circumstances.
Subsequent events - from Biafra to the Balkans, from Rwanda to Syria, to Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, to Sudan - show us that war continues to chiefly affect non-combatants.
Currently, according to the United Nations, civilians account for over 90% of conflict victims.
This cannot go unnoticed, nor left unpunished.
The number of people forced to leave their homes and their land is unprecedented.
According to the report released in April by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, there were 122 million such people. And the figure is increasing by the year.
Again, these are not just statistics.
These are faces, people on the move, families being wiped out, deprived of the future they were preparing for.
International humanitarian law, a bulwark against the inhumanity of war, is being challenged by all this.
But no “exceptional circumstances” can justify the unjustifiable: the bombing of inhabited areas, cynically starving populations, sexual violence.
No longer making a distinction between civilians and combatants strikes at the very heart of the principle of humanity.
It is the systematic implementation of the despicable practice of retaliation against innocent people.
It undermines the international order, based on the principle of respect between peoples and on the recognition of the horror of war, now compounded by the continuous emergence of new weapons.
Ladies and gentlemen,
there are antidotes, nonetheless, to this scenario of pain.
Peace is not the result of resignation in the face of great tragedies. It is the result of courageous initiatives and courageous people.
In recent decades, many actors in the international community, including the European Union, have stubbornly and painstakingly strived for peace, which is nourished by respect for fundamental human rights.
For if you truly want peace, you have to build it and preserve it.
Cooperation between states, institutions and peoples is the only measure that can protect human dignity.
Multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, peacekeeping missions and humanitarian agencies are the ones that contribute to the challenging and fascinating task of forging a global conscience.
Multilateralism is not bureaucracy, as the overbearing parties claim: it is the tool that scales down divergences, allowing for peaceful solutions; it is the language of shared responsibility.
It is the voice that calls to mind the value of every single person’s life, as opposed to the arrogance of those who would rather witness the prevailing of a ruthless, supposed raison d'état, forgetting that popular sovereignty precisely belongs to the citizens. Sovereignty belongs to the citizens and not to an impersonal Moloch that claims to determine their destinies.
It is a means of defence that the inhabitants of the planet can use against the logic of oppression pursued by those who, believing they momentarily have an edge, consider themselves entitled to plunder others.
New “Dr Strangeloves“ are appearing on the horizon, claiming that we must “love the bomb”.
The 1997 treaty banning nuclear testing has not yet been ratified by China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, Iran, Egypt or the United States, while Russia withdrew its ratification in 2023. To date, compliance with the treaty’s provisions is not mitigating the looming threat.
Other countries are declaring they might reconsider their rejection of nuclear weapons. This raises fears that we are embarking on an extremely risky path, opening a new Pandora’s box.
And all this is facilitated by the spread, at the international level, of a peremptory, harshly assertive language that claims supremacy.
Scrapping treaties and institutions created to protect us from the violence that we deem crimes and that we firmly condemn in our national societies (but which some claimare legitimate in international relations), only leads to suffering and division.
It must be reasserted with great resolve: the sovereignty of a people is not expressed in the right to wage war on its neighbour.
A nation’s desire to succeed does not translate into generating injustice.
A war of aggression is a crime.
The lesson of Nuremberg must be reaffirmed without compromise. In the words of Robert Jackson, a prosecutor at that Tribunal: “If we can cultivate in the world the idea that aggressive war-making is the way to the prisoner’s dock rather than the way to honours, we will have accomplished something toward making the peace more secure”.
It is up to us. It is up to us, too.
It is up to our peoples, united in suffering the responsibility for the last world war, but capable today of being united in building a future of peace and progress.
It is up to the Federal Republic of Germany; it is up to the Italian Republic – just as it is up to everyone in the international community – to pit the force of law against the claimed supremacy of armed force.
I also consider this day an invitation to contemplate, together, the extraordinary journey that our two Republics have made, side by side, for building - over the past eighty years -a better world, starting with Europe itself.
For having achieved wisdom in international life, as well as authentic courage.
For being truly “great”.
Because this is what we have become over the decades, embracing the cause of European unity.
We have created an area of peace, freedom, prosperity and respect for human rights, something that is unprecedented in history.
With the clear-minded courage of those who called for a new chapter and worked to make it happen.
The European Union, born from the ashes of war, has become the advocate of a multilateralism that serves peace.
Such responsibility is even greater today, given the troubling international situation.
It is a historic role: the pioneers pursued unity when it did not exist, against all previous experiences.
European countries have shown courage. European leaders have shown courage.
Let us not allow the European dream – our Union – to be torn apart today by the devotees of dark times. Times that have left a trail of pain, misery and despair.
This is our duty. Every generation has its task.
We owe it to those who fell and whom we remember today.
We owe it to the names inscribed on the stumbling blocks in our cities.
We owe it to the precious memory-preserving work of the Volksbund.
Finally, we owe it to our youths, who have the right to a safe world, different and better than that of war and post-war.
Mr Federal President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
in this spirit, I fully feel part of the National Day of Mourning.
The wounds of mankind’s past cannot be erased, yet they give rise to a common commitment to the future, to actions truly based on humanity.
Our duty: Never again. Nie wieder.
