Enrico Letta was prime minister of Italy for less than a year before he was ousted by a rival, Matteo Renzi. But a lot happened during Letta's time at the top. After six years in Paris, he's back in Italy and leading the centre-left Democratic Party with a conspicuously progressive agenda on issues like gender equality and LGBT+ rights. Speaking at the Global Progressive Forum, Letta describes the victim-shaming of Italy and Spain during the financial crisis — and he explains how a big bag of money from Brussels called NextGenerationEU may be helping heal the wounds. Letta also calls on the EU to make joint budget support permanent, and he suggests excluding Poland and Hungary from shared European migration and asylum policy to break the deadlock on the issue.