In my life I've done at least one thing right,
I take the full responsibility for it,
I personally thought about it and I chose it,
and then I shared it with the other members of my government:
organising the humanitarian and military rescue operation,
to save lives of migrants in the Mediterranean,
which was called Operation Mare Nostrum.
It was hard to organise it, to carry it out,
even to devise it, it was an original operation.
And it was extremely criticised.
That choice saved thousands of human lives.
What most annoyed me of all criticism against Mare Nostrum...
...was falseness.
Using those events to settle internal scores,
or to extract political gain, to improve one's image.
When human lives are involved, such tricks should be avoided.
Europe has always been the common thread of my life,
both personally and professionally.
I have lived in Strasbourg, a place where there was a border,
the bloodiest border in Europe,
where millions of French, German, European people have died,
to move it from one place to another.
In those years I experienced the concept of border,
and I experienced the end of that border,
and the beauty of a united Europe with Strasbourg as a capital.
In those few though intense, beautiful and fascinating months,
during which I represented Italy in the European Council,
I tried to be the strongest supporter of Europeaism.
Nowadays Germany is prevailing in Europe,
Germany made long-term investments in their leadership teams,
they sent to Brussels highly-qualified officials,
they invested in political careers in Brussels,
and today Europe speaks more German than ever before.
They were more far-sighted than us.
The other European countries, Italy above all,
thought that careers were only made in Rome.
You can't escape from the geography and the history of a country,
even in the times of the Internet,
we Italians are in the middle of the Mediterranean,
we have responsibilities,
and we must take on these responsibilities.