Rome, Berlin and the Brake

Politico Europe reported this week that Germany and Italy, together with Belgium, have asked for an emergency brake that would allow member states to stop new European Union legislation, arguing that Brussels must accelerate its efforts at business simplification. The request was attributed to the German, Italian and Belgian leaders by name.

The proposal is procedural, but procedure is where the Union's real arguments live. A brake of this kind would shift weight from the centre toward the member states, and it is notable that the demand comes not from the periphery but from three of the founding or large economies. When the states that built the house ask for a new lock on the door, the question is not whether they distrust Brussels but whether they still recognise it as their own instrument.

For Italy, the calculation is familiar to anyone who reads the foreign business press: a large public debt, a slow growth rate, and a standing complaint that European rules are written for economies unlike its own. The world's coverage has long framed Italy as a country that wants Europe's protection and resents Europe's constraints in roughly equal measure. This week's request fits that frame neatly, which is precisely why it deserves a second look. The same government that seeks a brake on legislation is not seeking exit from the Union; it is seeking terms.

We take the report at face value and draw no conclusion about its chances. The summit of November the twentieth, confirmed this week, will be about Britain and Europe rather than about this brake. But the two stories sit together usefully. A Union that is negotiating its outer edges while its inner members ask for new vetoes is a Union in the middle of a long conversation with itself. Italy, as so often, is speaking in it — audibly, and in more than one direction.