Italy must not use the river of money arriving from Europe to lower taxes, but to rekindle investment public and private. This is the opinion of Stephen Micossi, general manager of Assonymous, who spoke yesterday in the Chamber for a hearing on the community aid that our country will receive in the coming months.
These funds, “due to their nature One-off, must be intended for interventions to support public and private investments – explains Micossi – while they cannot guarantee permanent measures to reduce tax revenues or increase current expenditure".
Moreover, Micossi points out that "European resources must all be used”, including the new credit line from 36 billion of the month, which “can be immediately used to finance expenses directly and indirectly related to the health crisis, therefore including the expenses to adapt the production plants to the new health safety needs".
On this point he also expressed himself in similar terms the Secretary General of the OECD: “Italy should use the money from the Mes because it needs it – said Angel Gurria last week, commenting the new estimates of the Organization on the Italian GDP – The conditions are absolutely appropriate: it is an available tool, which is part of European solidarity”.
Returning to the general strategy to be adopted in the use of European aid, Mycossi also underlines the need for “overcome past bad practices, which have seen the use of European funds, especially at the regional level, wasted in a thousand streams in the defense of the existing instead of used to strengthen the tangible and intangible infrastructures of the country”.
Finally, since access to European funds “will be conditional on compliance with country-specific recommendations approved by the Council in the context of the European semester procedure – concludes Micossi – it is of fundamental importance that the National Reform Plan becomes the strategic tool to which the annual budget laws refer, in order to effectively coordinate objectives and public interventions, placing the interventions within the ambit of a plan for the stabilization and progressive reduction of the public debt”.
