Under his mandate, Oriol Junqueras, Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí were appointed MEPs. And also under his mandate, the ERC leader had to resign. "I have received criticism for my management from both pro-independence and anti-independence players," said David Maria Sassoli (Florence, 1956) in an interview with this newspaper on Europe Day. The president of the European Parliament who has possibly experienced the Catalan conflict most closely died early this morning, according to his spokesman Roberto Cuillo, after weeks in hospital due to a complication in his immune system. He had already had health problems at the end of 2021 that kept him away from parliamentary activity. He is the first top EU official to die in office.

Yesterday was Europe Day. A day which, if it is not to end up like so many other "so-and-so Days", appearing on the calendar and that is all, has to serve to stop and reflect on the functioning of the union of 27 states and, rather more importantly, of 447 million people. The dimensions are quite different from those of the European Coal and Steel Community, which 71 years ago yesterday laid the foundations for the EU. But we must not lose the spirit in which that path began: it was not a question of forming a club of friends, but of facing a triple context arising from the Second World War: the economic (reconstruction), the political (to ensure that the Paris-Berlin axis did not break down again) and the social (to undo the suspicions and enmities created by decades of conflict).