Allow me to thank President Pahor for his words and his important considerations, which I totally share.
I extend a greeting to the President of the Region, to the Ambassador of Slovenia, to the Mayor of Gorizia, and to the archbishop and, with him, to the bishop of Koper-Capodistria.
I am aware of the great honour of receiving this recognition jointly with Pahor – my friend Borut – the President Emeritus of the Republic of Slovenia, and underscore the significanceof this moment, which expresses the City of Gorizia’s vocation to be a key player in the European project.
Gorizia is going through an extraordinary year: a month ago, I was here with the President of Slovenia, Natasha Pirc Musar, to whom I am pleased to convey a thought of great and cordial friendship. Attending were a great many dignitaries – who are also present here today – to celebrate the beginning of the year of Nova Gorica and Gorizia being European Capital of Culture 2025.
I think that, on that day, everybody present on Transalpina Square, was aware of witnessing a moment of historical relevance, capable of producing deep-reaching effects on the future of Europe.
President Pahor and I were lucky enough to witness first-hand an extraordinary event: the progressive transformation of a border, which was conceived as a dividing line through the heart of a city and its people, but that turned into a place of meeting and sharing.
I believe that this ceremony can be written into this framework of change.
It is a renewed and rediscovered freedom of movement and brotherhood, which is not owed to single individuals or institutions – whose contribution is of course priceless – but is rather the fruit of our civil societies, which have been able to patiently re-establish those bonds of friendship, solidarity and mutual trust that the tragic events of World War II and the yearspreceding it had banished to this corner the territory which had seen Italians, Slavs, and Germans coexist in peace.
We owe this achievement to the citizens of this land: mature societies that have grown in democracy with effective antibodies against the fruitless and dangerous flattery of nationalism, which has produced such sizable and serious damage.
The common intent of the political authorities of Slovenia and Italy mirrors the institutional drive that is rooted in their respective populations and in the citizens’ wish for friendship, albeit divided by a physical border inherited from the war but united by the conviction that the feeling of horror and the desire for retaliation and revenge had to make way for peaceful coexistence and reconciliation.
This is how Gorizia and Nova Gorica – which have always been the crossroads of different peoples, languages, and cultures – have become, hand in hand, as Mayor Ziberna recalled, the vehicle to achieve this objective.
The two cities have courageously transformed the geographical proximity of two identities into an opportunity, giving life to an invaluable example, not only for our two Countries but for the whole of Europe and for the values that the European project represents.
Cooperation defined as an informed and rational choice to use knowledge, resources, culture and experience as a common denominator to the benefit of the people. Thus the border, from being a hostile place, becomes a factor of opportunities, of pooling resources, and of economic and scientific growth and cultural identity-building. This was underscoredearlier by President Fedriga and we find highly commendable the challenge of empowering Friuli to represent a laboratory of cross-border cultural ideas in favour of a European Union capable of tackling the crucial issues arising from the global scenario.
In his acceptance speech in 1984, physicist Carlo Rubbia – an eminent Gorizia-born citizen and Nobel Prize Laureate – highlighted precisely this aspect, emphasizing how the scientific research and the scientific discoveries for which he was being awarded the prize issued from a laboratory “constructed upon the very idea of an open world for science, as a prerequisite for peaceful developments”, and recalled the importance of “this spirit of collective greed for discovery rather than for power and struggle”.
We find these same principles in the extraordinary career of Borut Pahor, with whom I am delighted to share this prize and with whom I above all had the privilege of sharing part of the road towards committing to establish a bond of friendship between our two Countries. An experience that we not only lived as a civic and institutional duty to our respective people but also as our dutiful responsibility in order to achieve a future of peace for our continent.
Italy, Slovenia, and Europe have fully experienced the drama of the dangerous alternative to this project.
The first to be awarded this prize in 2001 was artist Anton Zoran Music – who was arrested and deported to Dachau during World War II – and who poured his valuable and tragic testimony onto the drawings saved from the lager, the famous cycle which he foresightedly decided to title “We Are Not the Last”. The horror of the concentration camps and the long winter of massacres that followed 1945 have been repeated too many times. They cannot be avoided by people surrendering to self-deception but through the commitment of the people and the courage of the institutions to never fail to respect human dignity.
I am grateful to the City of Gorizia for wanting to honour me with the recognition dedicated to its patron saints Ilario and Taziano, who lived in the heart of Europe at the outset of Christian faith – as Monsignor Redaelli reminded us – and were the pillars of a church – that of Aquileia – capable of keeping united different peoples and cultures. It offers me the opportunity to show how the road of cooperation – as testified by Nova Gorica and Gorizia – leads to success.
The shared experience of being the Cross-border European Capital of Culture 2025 is an opportunity of hope and trust in the European people and in Europe’s capacity to build history according to its values.
I cannot conclude without first renewing my gratitude for being awarded this prestigious prize.
Thank you!
