The Guardian Warns That Hollowning Brussels Would Serve Xi, Putin and Trump

The Guardian published an editorial on Tuesday arguing that proposals by Marine Le Pen and the leader of the Alternative für Deutschland, Alice Weidel, to hollow out the institutions of the European Union would amount, if ever enacted, to 'a continental act of self-harm'. The paper frames the plan as doing the work of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and recalls that Le Pen was in 'predictably celebratory mood' after the Brexit referendum of 2016.

The editorial is an argument rather than a report of a new event, and La Veduta treats it as such. Its subject, however, is the central institutional question of the European autumn: whether the discontent now visible in the squares of Paris, Milan and elsewhere is channelled into demands on Brussels or into dismantling it. The Guardian's answer is that anger on the streets could turn against the Union itself if it cannot show why cooperation improves people's lives.

For Italy, the editorial's implicit test is a parliamentary one. The country sends a large delegation to the European Parliament and its governing coalition contains parties that sit with the same European families the Guardian describes as seeking to weaken the institutions. The paper does not name Italian parties or predict Italian votes, and this dispatch does not either; the point is that the question the Guardian poses is addressed to Rome as much as to Paris or Berlin.

The Guardian's editorial anchors its argument in the Brexit precedent. It notes that Le Pen greeted the 2016 referendum result as a vindication, and uses that memory to suggest that the current proposals should be read not as a bargaining position but as a destination. The paper's concern is structural: that the machinery of regulation, competition policy and common trade defence, built up over decades, is easier to disable than to rebuild.

The editorial sits alongside other foreign commentary this week that treats Europe's unrest as a test of the Union's legitimacy rather than of any single government. The Guardian's own columnists have argued that the protests from Paris to Milan could turn against Brussels if the institutions fail to demonstrate practical benefit. Read together, the two pieces describe a pincer: pressure from parties that want the institutions weakened, and pressure from streets that want them to deliver.

For the Estero desk the relevant question is one of consistency. Italy is a founding member of the Union, a member of the eurozone and of NATO, and its governments of every colour have historically argued for a stronger European voice in trade and foreign policy. A coalition that includes parties sympathetic to the Le Pen–Weidel programme would have to reconcile that posture with its European alliances, and the Guardian's editorial does not say how it would.

The paper does not report any vote, draft treaty or formal proposal from the Italian government, and none should be inferred. What it offers is a frame: the far right's plans are described as a project that would benefit external powers more than European voters. Whether that framing persuades Italian electorates is a question the foreign press will keep asking as the autumn's protests move from the squares into the institutions.

The Guardian's conclusion is that the Union must show why cooperation makes people's lives better. That is a political argument, not a finding, and La Veduta reports it as the paper's view. It nonetheless sets the terms on which Rome's European policy will be judged by the foreign press in the months ahead, and it is the reason this editorial matters beyond the comment pages.