Emma Bonino passed away yesterday morning. The immense respect that this original and influential figure – capable of fulfilling her role both within and outside institutions, and both within and beyond national borders – continues to command, not only in Italy but in the press across half the world, which remembers her as the woman who changed the country on the issues of divorce and abortion and as a voice for feminism and European activism, is not merely a tribute. It is a reminder. Because her legacy contains the tools to respond to the events that overwhelm us every day: the rise of an extreme, illiberal and dangerous right; a ruling class lacking in competence and vision, and often showing contempt for the very institutions in which it sits; and a climate crisis that no one can deny any longer, yet to which Italy is responding in a baffling manner, appointing a commissioner not to accelerate the transition, but to extract domestic oil and gas more quickly.

I met and spent time with Emma Bonino mainly in Brussels, during her years as a European Commissioner in the troubled Santer Commission, from 1995 to 1999, and later when we were both at the European Parliament, and then again whilst travelling around the many campaigns she spearheaded with energy and conviction. Whilst she was a Commissioner, I worked in the Parliament alongside another extraordinary woman with a similar radical background, Adelaide Aglietta, who left us far too soon. Bonino was the last to be appointed by Berlusconi, after much dithering, when Mario Monti had already been given the portfolio for the Internal Market. She was assigned what were considered minor portfolios: humanitarian aid, consumer protection and fisheries. It took very little for her to become the best-known and most beloved member of the team, popular even beyond Europe’s borders. She transformed the humanitarian office into a rapid-response unit, committed herself wholeheartedly to the war in Bosnia, defended fishermen during a particularly gruelling international crisis, and led Europe to engage with global struggles that seemed a world away from the EU’s institutions: from the Dalai Lama to Burma, from the moratorium on the death penalty to female genital mutilation, right through to the defence of dissidents and activists in every corner of the world. She demonstrated that even an institution perceived as distant could play a direct and visible role in defending rights and tangibly improving people’s lives.

In the 1999 European elections, Bonino led her list to a result that has never been equalled, and brought to Strasbourg a team of MEPs with whom we Greens worked tirelessly to make that assembly a forum for non-violent action in support of rights and European federation. It is from this lesson – consistency in our struggles, effectiveness in our results, a respectful and rigorous presence within the institutions, a constant grounding in civil society, and the ability to build networks and alliances that bring together different worlds – that we should draw inspiration to organise an increasingly urgent response to three phenomena that are hitting us head-on today: the climate and energy crisis and its economic, social and environmental consequences; the attack on the rights and dignity of minorities and migrants, and now increasingly also on dissent, by an extreme right that is becoming ever more mainstream; and the very real prospect of an EU hollowed out from within, stripped of its values and its capacity to act.

In short, the AfD’s 44 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt and Vannacci’s rise in the Italian polls have not settled the matter: they have opened up a path for those who can offer an alternative. As Mario Monti wrote in the *Corriere della Sera*: verbally attacking sovereigntists and nationalists is no longer enough; the pro-European camp must return to putting forward proposals and, I would add, to uniting and mobilising, precisely now that the danger is explicit and no longer hidden behind reassuring and falsely ‘common-sense’ rhetoric. In her self-congratulatory speech in Bari, Meloni claimed credit for her role in steering the Union towards positions that until recently were considered extremist, and she has toughened her tone: she struggles to distinguish herself from Vannacci and ends up following in his footsteps, because she too comes from that same culture, as demonstrated by her friendship with Abascal and Orbán and her admiration for Trump. But a European Union in the Meloni mould, Le Pen, or worse still Weidel, (and let us note, they are all women) would be a more contentious continent, with divided and resentful internal communities, an economy based on fossil fuels and special-interest groups, and a Europe reduced to an increasingly impoverished cash machine, increasingly irrelevant on the world stage and even more incapable of addressing citizens’ concerns and insecurities. It is precisely this radicalisation that demonstrates that space for an alternative does exist, and it must be seized upon swiftly. With concrete proposals, not merely with indignation, which, as Bonino demonstrated throughout her life, must be filled with substance and action. “I would have preferred to be loved less and voted for more,” she used to say with her trademark sharp wit: a warning not to mistake the applause of a packed square for genuine consent.

Climate and energy: the real world turned on its head

On 11 September, Giorgia Meloni dedicated a video message to energy security, boasting of 28 GW of installed renewable capacity, “three times better than those who are now lecturing us on green energy”, only to then announce the true crux of the measure: a decree introducing special commissioners to fast-track permits and concessions for hydrocarbons. Renewables as rhetorical boasting, fossil fuels as real policy. It is the very same measure that Confindustria has been calling for for months, but for renewables, not for oil: Orsini highlights 130 GW of stalled investments, with a further 150 GW according to the Teha Group report for Elettricità Futura, whilst national reserves cover barely 15 months’ worth of oil consumption and 8 months’ worth of gas. An illogical stubborn clinging to fossil fuels, divorced from reality and even from the demands of the industrialists whom the government claims to represent, purely for the benefit of the oil companies, who are in fact gloating. This absurdity is debunked by a simple fact: not only would the oil extracted in Italy last for only a few months, but it would not even be passed on at a discount to Italian households.

Private concessionaires sell it on the international market at the same price as everyone else. The recent price surge – with Brent crude exceeding $107 and gas at its highest level in nearly four years due to tensions in the Strait of Hormuz – demonstrates in real time the cost of remaining tied to a global fossil fuel market. Truly tackling high energy prices in a structural way means breaking free from that dependence: electrification of consumption, renewables, energy storage, efficiency, the circular economy, and a firm ‘no’ to nuclear power and drilling. It is along these lines – by taking a firm stand against the extraction of domestic hydrocarbons, against the billions squandered on indiscriminate excise duty cuts that make no difference to anyone’s lives, and against a nuclear programme that is still a long way off but will soon begin to devour precious resources – that the opposition must build a response that is far more visible, concrete and organised than it is today.

In short, we need a genuine industrial policy for the energy transition, one that links decarbonisation to the excellence of ‘Made in Italy’ rather than pitting them against one another, as we have argued on other occasions. And to drive forward renewables, we do not need yet another commissioner. The bottleneck lies not only in authorisations, but in a bottleneck further upstream: the auction quota is still far too small and is being allocated with exasperating slowness, whilst the market for long-term contracts between producers and industry – the PPAs – remains underdeveloped and lacks public support. As Agostino Re Rebaudengo explains, at this stage we need to make the existing framework effective, not start from scratch or superimpose a new decision-making apparatus. If commissioners are truly needed, let us appoint those still missing from the PNRR-PNIEC Technical Commission: established in 2021 to speed up environmental impact assessments, it has itself become a bottleneck accumulating delays of even several years, understaffed from the outset — fifty commissioners out of the seventy planned, “a number that should be increased to at least one hundred, whilst businesses pay the preliminary assessment fees up front, amounting to around 50 million a year”. On top of all this, the government’s ideological subservience is costing us dearly: it is even holding back those who would like to work towards a less dependent Italy. And not a word, ever, on climate adaptation, whilst summers are burning through billions. We must also respond to the climate crisis culturally, with the tenacity with which Emma Bonino transformed a marginal issue into a central topic of public debate: by rejecting resignation, and by showing that the transition is an opportunity for work and dignity, not a sacrifice.

Migrants: legality and humanity

In 2017, Emma Bonino launched ‘Ero straniero: l’umanità che fa bene’ (‘I was a foreigner: humanity that does good’), a citizens’ initiative bill to repeal the Bossi-Fini law, backed by over 90,000 signatures and a very broad coalition: the Radicals, Casa della Carità, ACLI, ARCI, ASGI, churches, trade unions and hundreds of mayors.

Legality and humanity together, not one against the other. That is exactly what is missing today. The UNHCR points out that 65 per cent of the world’s refugees are hosted by neighbouring low-income countries, not by Europe, and Italian (and European) cuts to development cooperation – with AICS funds falling from 630 to 560 million – are hitting precisely those countries. The ‘Albania model’ has cost 670 million over five years for fewer than 60 actual transfers in 2024. And the infamous ‘migrant intake decree’, which the government touts as a gateway to legal employment, is an empty promise: according to monitoring by the ‘Ero Straniero’ campaign itself, in 2024 only 7.8 per cent of the quotas resulted in an actual residence permit, compared with 13 per cent in 2023. People brought in because they are needed by the economy, and then left to slip into irregular status. Meanwhile, the new European approach – with accelerated border procedures and detention for up to six months – is curtailing the right to asylum, which is becoming increasingly theoretical, as denounced by Human Rights Watch. The proposal is clear: to fully implement the solidarity mechanism of the European Pact, to open legal channels tailored to the actual needs of the labour market, and to move beyond the Bossi-Fini law — which, as former police chief Franco Gabrielli notes, plans for the arrival of half a million people by declaring them necessary, only to then treat them as illegal immigrants. There are many convincing and concrete proposals worth taking up: replacing ‘click days’ with flexible and continuous entry channels, managed in coordination with countries of origin and tailored to actual labour market needs; individual-based regularisation for those already settled and in employment, following the model of Spain and Germany; overcoming the security-based framework that, since 2009, has treated irregular entry as a criminal offence, not least because of its manifest ineffectiveness, and granting the right to vote in local elections to long-term residents. Bonino brought these battles to the national stage with the same pragmatism with which she defended a fisherman or a person sentenced to death: rights either apply to everyone, or they apply to no one.

There is a very ‘Boninian’ way of undermining Vannacci and his ilk: instead of chasing after them, we should look at where their proposals would actually lead. Theirs is not a plan to leave; no one is calling for ‘Italexit’ any more, and Vannacci, in fact, denies it. It is something more subtle and more insidious, which Meloni is already putting into practice: remaining within the Union and hollowing it out from within, keeping the funds and the market whilst dismantling the common rules, the primacy of European law, and the capacity to decide together. But a Union weakened in this way no longer protects anyone, starting with Italy itself: outside the shared rules, the EU and Italy do not regain any meaningful sovereignty or autonomy; they are simply more exposed to the United States, China and Russia. And then there is the cost that all these parties, more or less explicitly, deny: that of the climate crisis.

For Italy, failing to tackle it could mean a loss of up to 6 per cent of GDP by 2050 (CMCC-Deloitte estimate), with 25 billion already lost in a single summer of drought, compared with the approximately 10 billion a year in adaptation investments recommended by the European Commission for our country. Enormous, yes, but far less than the damage caused by inaction. And beware of believing that the danger comes only from the most extreme voices. Meloni has built up an image of reliability, but she certainly does cause damage: she opposes moving beyond the unanimity rule and, on almost all economic and climate issues, she stubbornly sticks to her ‘no’. That is why the response cannot be merely a matter of government technique, but must be a reform driven by the people: overcoming the unanimity rule with qualified majority voting, completing the single market and preparing a genuine European constitutional process, as proposed by the European Movement led by Pier Virgilio Dastoli, who has shared decades of federalist struggles with Bonino, and who has just launched the ‘Obiettivo 1000’ initiative in Rome, calling for a revival of the European constitutional process 1,000 days before the next European elections. It is a process that concerns the citizens who will have to live with it, not just the governments negotiating it: for this reason, it must be accompanied by grassroots participation, not decided behind closed doors at the top. Not least because when members of the Meloni government call for change in Europe in response to the AfD vote, they are merely playing catch-up: our Europe must be the exact opposite, and this difference must be asserted and substantiated with pride, not lost amidst empty slogans.

The method matters just as much as the proposals

But the best proposals, on their own, do not come to fruition: it is people who bring them to life. And here there are two pitfalls to avoid. The first is an obsessive focus – fuelled by media outlets that prefer to squabble over names rather than examine the issues – on defining a lone leader, the search for a figure who acts as a mirror to Meloni. It is better to settle this as soon as possible so it is no longer an issue. The second, more insidious trap is a programme drafted behind closed doors by a handful of experts: an approach that replicates, with the roles reversed, the very same flaw of the government – deciding without building consensus or focusing solely on one’s own circle. Bonino taught the exact opposite. Her victories with Pannella’s Radicals, but also many others – from divorce to abortion, from ‘Ero straniero’ to international campaigns, stemmed from a few clear objectives, grounded in facts rather than opinion polls, and from alliances that brought together secularists and Catholics, trade unions and businesses, in that day-to-day practice that is true democracy – the kind that is not limited to voting, whilst still requiring a presence within institutions and thus positive electoral results. How, then, does one prepare for victory? By selecting a few truly defining issues and developing them with those who will have to live with them: why not organise a major convention on the Green Deal with businesses, trade unions and local communities? Or forums on integration with associations and the students of Ius Scholae? A round-table discussion with the green industry on real employment? Or a thousand other initiatives in which so many citizens and activists are eager to take part? The political space is there, and it must be filled with verifiable proposals on climate and energy – the truly revolutionary and transformative arena of our society – as well as on rights, migrants and the Europe we want: crying scandal over the victories of Vannacci,

Meloni and the AFD serves little purpose, because it no longer convinces a public that has lost its bearings and even the memory of what the tragic history of the twentieth century taught us — that ‘never again’ which inspired the great post-war achievements in freedom and rights. The far right must be defeated because it is based on hateful values and false solutions. Our task is to demonstrate through our actions that there is an alternative that works better. Emma Bonino has left us a method for doing so. It is up to us to have the ability to use it.