PLEBISCITO.EU | PNV. Press News Veneto

This global economic crisis is having disgusting political repercussions within Europe. Switzerland is being subjected to unacceptable pressures and treatment, and European people must defend this beacon of civic social structure against the wicked intentions of some rogue European governments.

As with any plague, the weakest are doomed to perish and the strongest are likely to survive. With this unusually harsh recession, countries with inefficient government, like Italy, are facing imminent bankruptcy. While countries with a responsible political system, like Switzerland, are able to provide a stable backbone to its economy.

Ideally, these difficult times should spur political reforms in an inefficient country like Italy. The Italian state has accumulated the worst national debt in Europe (120% of national production by 2010), and it keeps growing at a fast space with one of the worst deficits (6% of national production by 2010) in the continent. Rome imposes among the heaviest fiscal burdens in Europe, and in return it provides mediocre public services that leave citizens wishing they resided in nearby Switzerland.

Instead of responding to the recent crisis with political reforms (perhaps taking example from the Swiss system), Italy is taking a deplorable stance against Switzerland. It is desperately attempting to lure in whatever financial resources it can, in order to postpone as much as possible its inevitable national bankruptcy.

The Venetian National Party (Partito Nasional Veneto – PNV) has already condemned the Italian government indifferent stance with regards to the unacceptable attacks by the Lybian leader against Swiss sovereignty (see article). PNV now also strongly disapproves of the recent financial aggression by Italy against Switzerland.

Including Switzerland in a black list of countries, from which bank deposits must return to be regularized, is laughable at best. This is a shameful attack against a neighbor’s financial system, and it should not be forgiven. It cannot be excused especially because it appears to be the Italian prime minister’s personal vendetta. His company Mediaset, coincidentally, is currently being investigated for money laundering by Swiss magistrates.

So Switzerland is planning forms of retaliation. Ideas have ranged from imposing limits on Italian trucks, all the way to introducing a 5% tax on capital leaving the country. All these proposed repercussions, from the mildest to the most irrational, are bad ideas.

Responding with economic sanction is a method that may work against other democracies. Italian citizens feel the burden of these sanctions, they put pressure on Italian politicians to defuse the situation, and Italian politicians accordingly stop acting like a North African dictator.

Remember instead that Italy is a dysfunctional democracy. These sanctions will end up hurting both Swiss and Italian citizens, who have no power to pressure party bosses. In particular, the boss of the bosses is already protecting his personal interests, and sanctioning truck traffic will at best tickle him and his parliamentarian posse.

Switzerland needs to take a more farsighted stance. It cannot afford to have a North African state along its Southern border. A neighbor who still has territorial aspirations of Greater Italy extending to Southern Swiss cantons. This is a country with a dysfunctional public structure that depletes its citizens’ wealth, devoured by mafia enterprises down the peninsula.

Switzerland needs neighbors more like itself. It needs to be surrounded by other small and efficient countries, like it was for centuries before the creation of large nation states. Remember that as the Kingdom of Italy was first created by Napoleon, the French dictator took the Swiss canton of Valtellina and annexed it to his new puppet state.

It’s time for Swiss citizens to rethink their neutrality, and start meddling with neighboring politics. Swiss people must support foreign political movements that strive to establish a society like theirs. Swiss enterprises ought to finance political parties that actively work the legal international path toward a new geopolitical equilibrium.

Every Swiss should sustain initiatives like Veneti al 1000×1000. We Venetians need your help so that we can bring the necessary changes to our unfortunate political system. We are ashamed of being part of a country that is so hostile to the Swiss model. As an independent state, we were for centuries friendly neighbors to the Swiss. We had similar systems based on decentralized politics and respect of civil liberties. We still have a strong civic sense of responsibility, and we are pleading for help before a corrupt Italian system completely changes our ways.

Switzerland, please help us be better neighbors.

Filipo Dal Lago

Venetian National Party (PNV)