"Few, cursed and immediately": the motto unfortunately seems to be subject to the countless proposals of how and where to use EU funds, including healthcare. This stands in clear and total contradiction with the urgency of starting a reasoning on the priorities and choices of economic and industrial policy interventions that should be adopted for the relaunch of an economy in secular stagnation and which, after the pandemic, will not it will no longer be the same as before. A new role of the State is hoped for, underlining that this involves a (politically painful) revision of the budgets of public administrations, but it is also silent that this is not the only actor who must innovate his part in the social and economic fields.
With the premise that the pandemic will unacceptably increase economic and social inequalities, we witness a great deal of requests on how to use it every day the substantial funds made available by the European Union. The list of requests for commitment from EU funds, normally completely undifferentiated as to planning and implementation times, is a never ending story. Expenditure indications advanced not only by the Government, trade unions and Confindustria, but also by the clamor of the most imaginative task forces which many public and private bodies have equipped themselves with in defense of their citizens and associates.
It is silent on the size and timing of each proposed intervention, but the immediate disbursement of liquidity is requested for companies in crisis, the result of theillusory need to please everyone immediately. It is the cultural policy premise for the dissipation of funds in a thousand streams which will also be made available by the Italian public budget to get out of the social and economic crisis generated by the pandemic.
And so, but without claiming to be exhaustive, we range from investments in infrastructure, health, innovation and research, in policies for social and environmental sustainability, in active employment policies; but without forgetting the urgency of developing and strengthening the new human capital, digital networks and the road and rail transport network, the rehabilitation of urban suburbs, the new role of public companies and the rescue of private companies, and so on listing, keeping silent about the interweaving of the various requests, in the declared conviction that all this would bring the Italian economy out of the age-old stagnation that afflicts it. A kind of real illusion on a New Deal in the manner of US President FD Roosevelt in the XNUMXs.
Because such proposals are all acceptable as well as necessary, we must ask ourselves, also to be reasonably and technically reliable within the EU, what are the economic and industrial policy priorities to be met in the coming years, not all of which can be launched at the same time also due to the lack of new professional skills and technical and scientific skills essential for tackling and solving the numerous problems that will arise at the start-up and during construction of each individual operation.
The relaunch postulates the adoption of strategic political choices which require the supposed ruling class to have the courage to indicate to public opinion the shared priorities, and the combination of the related funds to be committed over a few years in the social and economic fields. Will the Government, Trade Unions, Confindustria be able to have the courage to get out of the generality of announcements and requests to take the long path of priority planning and related achievements? It would be a true cultural revolution in the field of our country's economic and industrial policy.
