August 2024, Year XVI, n. 8
Mario Baccini
Centre of Permanent Gravity
“We shouldn’t think in terms of a two-party system to create a ‘centre movement’. However, we do need to accept the idea that Christian Democracy is a thing of the past and, if anything, we should think about a new central – not centrist – container.”
Telos: You started your political career with Christian Democracy and then you spearheaded the transformation of the Italian political system into a two-party system. What place and role have the former Christian Democrats had in the Second Republic? Do you think the legacy of Christian Democracy is still one to be reclaimed?
Mario Baccini: Actually, my political career began in the youth sections of the ACLI (Association of Italian Christian Workers) and then the UDC (Union of Christian Democrats). I would say that during the First Republic (1948-1994) the era of Christian Democracy marked an evolution that, by supporting, from Prime Minister De Gasperi on, the social doctrine of the Church as the basis for plans to create a State that focussed on people and their needs, contributed to the economic miracle of the fifties, which in the eighties led to Italy becoming one of the seven great global economic powers with a growing economy.
Today what politics ought to reclaim from that era are the cultural roots that foster planning aimed at the economic and social recovery of the country, shifting the focus back on the individual and supporting the arguments of a leave-no-man-behind social and market economy that generates employment and productivity through new welfare systems.
We must look to the cultural factor, through the experience of the forerunners to Christian Democracy, for the fundamental inspiration for new plans. The values of continuity with history and the past must form the foundations for the popular party and it must overcome its own limitations through innovation and analysis of the moment in history we are experiencing to avoid devolving into just an out-dated attempt to pull people together that is paradoxically pointless.
Despite the majority voting laws, the Italian political class does not seem to have ever fully relinquished their hope of rebuilding the political Centre. Yet these plans have rarely been backed by voter consensus. Do you think it still makes sense to think about a Centre Party or a Centre Pole?
We shouldn’t think in terms of a two-party system to create a ‘centre movement’. However, we do need to accept the idea that Christian Democracy is a thing of the past and, if anything, we should think about a new central – not centrist – container. A grouping that could meet the needs of voters who embrace the principles and values of European popularism.
Holding onto the values of the Italian Popular Party while also looking to the Appello ai Liberi e Forti (T.N. Appeal to the Free and Strong) which inspired the creation of Luigi Sturzo and Alcide De Gasperi’s party, we must overcome the obstacles posed by a world that is a far cry from that of the era of Christian Democracy. Especially with the contrast between today’s technology, AI, etc., with our two-speed world where the gap between those with knowhow and those who are unable to survive under technocracy is too wide.
We must be able to govern the processes to come up with development plans that take into account more than just the short term and look at least 20 years into the future while also considering development plans that cultivate the common good.
This is the inspiration we need to draw people to the centre, to further policies that meet citizens’ needs but are not burdened by bureaucracy and do not feed off catchy slogans supporting ideas that stress differences and division. A politics of inclusion that respects differences, that glorifies uniqueness. Personalist politics and personalist parties have no place in the centre.
One of your pet projects is the Italian National Microcredit Agency which provides concrete aid to micro-industries and socially disadvantaged sections of society by helping them access credit. Almost an impossible mission. Could you share a success story that you have been struck by?
Over the years (starting in 2015 when the guarantee fund was created for SMEs), there have been plenty of success stories involving people young and old, women and the unemployed, whose lives have been changed by this extraordinary instrument. Microcredit has helped create 24,000 companies, and behind every story is a person who, thanks to the State that believed in their potential and ideas, made their dream come true, created a business. This is why I think each story is worth telling, so I couldn’t choose just one.
But I can tell you about the Microcredito di Libertà (Microcredit for Freedom) Project, whereby, thanks to the support of the Equal Opportunities Ministry who entrusted us with its management, we are trying to pursue a policy of emancipation from economic violence. This particular financial instrument, backed 100 per cent by the State, helps women who have completed a programme in a domestic violence centre get back into the game and walk that last mile toward a new life.
If you say Fiumicino, everyone thinks of the airport. Not many people know either the history or the importance of this new municipality on the coast near Rome where you have served as Mayor since 2023. Could you tell us about it?
Fiumicino is an idea! A municipality with 24 km of coastline and the potential of a great smart city where different landscapes and cultures are expressed in 15 small towns where you find the second largest commercial farm in Europe, one of the most important Imperial era archaeological sites, an intercontinental airport, a fleet of fishing boats and a shipbuilding industry that supports the regional and national economy.
Quality of life is high in Fiumicino, so high that in 2023 it was rated one of the most popular cities for young people and families to move to, with demographic growth of 1,000 units a year. I am convinced that my administration has an important task: to help transform this reality in terms of digitalisation, of increasing services for people while continuing to care for the environment and sustainability.
Fiumicino is a relatively young municipality, created just 30 years ago by the Italian State thanks to the first committee that asked for it to be established, but it is rich in history and traditions: from agricultural festivals to remember the people who reclaimed this land, to the monumental pine woods planted by Pope Clement IX, to Giuseppe Perugini’s ambitious architecture, studied the world over as an example of the seventies, to the borough in the heart of Fiumicino designed by the architect Giuseppe Valadier.
There is a lot to explore in Fiumicino, with its old farmhouses, hunting lodges, villages and especially its sea, and my administration’s projects aim to support tourism also by creating training facilities for resources who can promote its local excellences and effectively attract people with different needs while valorising each area of the City.
Mariella Palazzolo
Editorial
Our guest for the August issue of PRIMOPIANOSCALAc is Mario Baccini, a longtime politician and administrator, who we cannot help but feel grateful to for reminding us and our readers that politics as a profession is mainly thought, an identity, a depository of culture and experience that politicians then transform into vision and future plans.
His considerations are old-fashioned, but that is exactly why we need them. Now more than ever people try to deny that the spaces and conditions are ripe for political replication, and the main deniers –first with their words and then with their actions – are indeed the latest generation of political leaders: lone men and women searching for easy jabs and incendiary comments, grandiose gestures that rile up public opinion, dividing the world into good and bad, friends and foes
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They are professionals, no doubt, but professional communicators, devoted to building overblown personalities who care little for content or programs but can rouse love and hate in citizens who by now have been reduced to mere spectators. With clarity and pride, Baccini offers us a model that is the polar opposite of this.
The history and experience of a large mass party are what convince him that politics can and must govern society, not entertain it. It can and must force the changes brought about by technological progress and the opening of markets to submit to the necessary discipline of economic planning, e.g. by updating welfare models so they are in line with our new circumstances in order to protect citizens from the risk of impoverishment and social marginalization.
How do you pull off an endeavour that seems not only titanic but now even foreign to the playing field of politics? For Baccini, it’s certainly no lost cause, nor is it an overly ambitious attempt to go back to the past or even worse, a dream, agitated when faced with a social body that has been disoriented in order to incite fleeting enthusiasm.
On the contrary: it is the unwavering aim of government action, for a political community that (really) wants to harvest the heritage of the best doctrine of democratic Catholicism.
It is precisely faithfulness to the cultural roots that drive popularism to inspire, almost impose, moving in this direction while also pointing out one possible way to reconstitute functioning political parties that are up to their task.
Using his experience with the National Microcredit Agency, Baccini also offers a wonderful example of how focusing on people can inspire concrete political choices that protect the most vulnerable, creating instruments of social inclusion that do not perpetuate dependence on public assistance, but rather incentivise economic emancipation. Like with the Microcredito di Libertà project, which offers women who have suffered domestic violence opportunities to more easily access credit in order to get through hard financial times and to start business initiatives.
While reading this interview, it is easy to get caught up in Baccini’s passion as he talks about his political experience and the challenges awaiting him as the Mayor of Fiumicino. It brings to mind something a leading politician of the First Republic said: “If politics is merely a job, it lasts a few years, if it’s thought, it lasts a lifetime.”
PRIMOPIANOSCALAc’s 2024 cover series is inspired by the works of Romano Gazzera, a Piedmontese painter known for his ‘giant’, ‘talking’, ‘flying’ flowers which, along with other iconographic themes connected to historical and collective memory, characterised and distinguished him as the frontrunner of the Italian Neo-floral school.
For Baccini we have chosen the acanthus, a Mediterranean plant. We know its leaves well, the most “classic of the classics” in architectural ornamentation since ancient Greece. They are a dominant feature of Corinthian columns, which Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio attributes to Greek sculptor Callimachus in book IV of his treatise De Architectura. Acanthus leaves are a decorative element found in the magnificent though little known archaeological area of Fiumicino, where Baccini is Mayor. Time for a visit. You won’t be disappointed.
Marco Sonsini
Mario Baccini has been the Mayor of Fiumicino since 2023. He started his career in politics at a young age with ACLI (Association of Italian Catholic Workers), and after holding various offices in Christian Democracy, he was first elected President of the XVIII Municipality and then Rome City Councilor. In 1994 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and was re-elected for the 12th, 13th, 14th and 16th legislatures, whereas during the 15th legislature he was elected senator and served as Vice-president of the Senate.
In the II Berlusconi cabinet, he served as Foreign Affairs Undersecretary of State, delegated to relations with the Americas. While holding office, he created the National Microcredit Committee, which in 2011 became a national agency. He currently serves as its President. He was also Minister of Public Function in the III Berlusconi cabinet. He shows his social commitment through his work as President of the Foedus Foundation, creating a synergy between culture, solidarity and business activities in Italy and worldwide. He has authored numerous articles and publications on ethical finance and preventive diplomacy. Baccini is from Rome and is 66 years old. He is married to Diana and has three children: Alan, Roberta and Zoe.
Marco Sonsini
SocialTelos