54	THE END OF PREHISTORY?

There isn’t much to tell about my firsthand political experience as a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2004: the lunch where Gad Lerner and Luciano Segre proposed that I run, the slightly hypocritical maneuverings of Romano Prodi, the telephone call from Massimo D’Alema, a letter from me to which Piero Fassino didn’t even deign to respond with a raspberry, the telephone calls from Antonio Di Pietro every half hour, the improprieties of Marco Rizzo’s stooges. . . .

For the subhistorical record: in the Turin district I was elected on the Left Democratic slate, together with Bruno Trentin and Fiorella Ghilardotti: 130,000 preferences for Trentin, more than 60,000 for me, a shade less for Fiorella. I would guess that 5,000 were for me and the rest for the party; I’m not stupid or presumptuous or ingenuous enough to suppose otherwise. At the same time, Massimo Cacciari was elected in Turin on Prodi’s Asinello list.

These are just the little details, minute particulars of history.

The wonder of it was this: who helped me overcome my grief, which lasted for years, at the loss of Gianpiero? Sergio first of all. But also the experience of the European Parliament. Because I discovered a true family. I had an office and a couple of assistants at Turin, and a terrific assistant at Brussels. I still miss arriving in Brussels and finding Peppino waiting for me, then returning to Turin and finding Mario and Stefano.

So I took an obligatory five-year leave from the university and became a member of the European Parliament, meaning a person with no political clout who gets to have an unusual experience and enjoy a fat salary—except that a large percentage of it went to the party. When I realized that the Left Democrats were going to dump me, though, I kept part of it for myself, that is, for an eventual “private” electoral campaign, which I did in fact wage.

That money. It was used to keep an association of students and professors that was, and still is, called Altera going in the office I had in Via Pio V, but now it’s tough for them without that support, although Nicola Tranfaglia and I still kick in a few euros once in a while.

At Brussels I always used to say, “Give me a report, even a rapporto protetto.” Because, since they can’t decide anything, members of the European Parliament try to win a name for themselves by attaching their name to a report on some topic or other. The Commission sends you a measure they wish to take, you study it and write the whole thing up, then take it to your group and present it. Even if the Assembly does vote it down, the Commission goes ahead with it anyway, because they’re utterly indifferent.

I tried to get more money for the students in the Erasmus exchange program, but naturally it couldn’t be done. I took a stand a few times in the civil-rights committee on things such as wiretapping and bioethics. I got all the left-wing members of the European Parliament angry by defending prostitution, on the grounds that—for those who choose it—it’s a trade like any other, that in fact some prostitutes were trying to form a union, and that we ought to be defending them instead of leaving them in the clutches of the Mafia.

I put the most commitment (relatively, you understand) into the Echelon Report, the thing about the electronic eavesdropping. In the end I even managed to convince the Italian socialist group to abstain from voting because the report was drafted by a German Social Democrat—a certain Schmidt, what else would he be called?—who practically stated that the intelligence services are the business of the governments, we can’t touch them, just give them a free rein.

I would leave for Brussels on Monday and return on Thursday or Friday. Brussels is death politically. Fortunately there were these elder statesmen of the historical Italian left, very representative and also very intelligent. When I dined with Giorgio Napolitano and Giorgio Ruffolo it was a feast, because they had so much to recount: Ruffolo had been at ENI with Enrico Mattei, and Napolitano had his own take on the whole history of Italian communism. Honestly, I admired them.

I learned so much. That’s where I really became a communist, in the sense that I realized once and for all that, when the world is integrated to this degree of controllability, either it has to be run by a “socialist” government or else we’re at the mercy of the first Texas oilman who comes along. Like we are now. I formed the notion that either the future will be socialist or there won’t be one.

I was a real believer in the idea of Europe. To the point that, right in the middle of an election campaign, I helped to organize interventions on May 30, 2004, in all the European countries, in the papers of all the European countries, on the new Europe we hoped to see constructed. Habermas, Eco, Derrida, and I wrote articles. Even Rorty wrote a piece. They all maintained that the only way to forge ahead was to create Europe. If Europe were to become a real political subject, a state, even a federal state, we would be able to say we had emerged from prehistory. Because for the first time a new state would have been born not out of war but out of the will of the citizens. In fact, it wasn’t born. I also hoped that Italy—backward as it is, especially when it comes to civil rights—would be forced to pull up its socks. Another illusion.

I did my best, I conducted all my election campaigns properly, speeches, publications. But at that point the Democratic Party of the Left didn’t want me anymore.