Il Financial Times named Mario Draghi as its man of the year. Never has a choice been more appropriate, but for completeness we should add another name. There are two men of the year for 2012: the two Super Marios, Mario Draghi and Mario Monti. If the euro is safe, the credit goes above all to them. For what they have been able to do in Europe and, in the case of Monti, for what has been done in Italy.
Ours is a country with a short memory and which is often cradled in illusions, but we have never run so many dangers as in recent times. Let's not forget that Monti arrived at Palazzo Chigi in mid-November 2011 because Italy was on the verge of bankruptcy and the spread, which measures its reliability on the financial markets, was double today. And let's not forget that last spring no one swore by the future of the euro. The combined action, but respectful of the different roles and mutual autonomy, of two Italians of whom we must be proud like Mario Draghi and Mario Monti has worked a miracle and if our country has not gone the way of Greece and is better off than Spain but most of all if the euro and Europe have not been shattered, the credit is mainly theirs.
With an ingenious but respectful move of the European treaties and the statute of the ECB, Draghi first guaranteed unlimited funds to the banks and then, with a real swing, he ensured the purchase of bonds from countries that had asked the European Union helps the new state-saving fund, crushing the financial speculation that had bet on the sinking of the euro.
Like Draghi, Monti spent his infinite international credibility and his perfect mastery of European rules to carry out the persuasion action towards the EU partners and Germany in the first place and achieve the goal of securing the euro through the anti-spread shield and single banking supervision which crowned the European Council at the end of June. Monti did the rest at home, reassuring both the financial markets and international institutions right from his entry into Palazzo Chigi and putting public finances under control but also breaking the ruinous rules of party politics and the inauspicious Berlusconian era that had brought the Country on the brink of default.
Monti and Draghi have the great merit of having made Italians understand that the future of our country is like a football championship: you win at home – with an economic policy of rigor and development but also with an incessant strategy of reforms – but above all away, that is to say in Europe, not only acknowledging but contributing to shaping the Community's policies. It is no coincidence that the Monti Agenda, which will be a central point of reference in the forthcoming electoral campaign, is called “Change Italy and reform Europe”.
This was true for securing public finances and must be true in 2013 for growth and development. To get out of the recession that has hit Italy even more than Europe, we need an Italian strategy but above all we need a European strategy. The Monti Agenda indicates the path. In Italy it is necessary to create the conditions to drastically reduce taxes on labor and companies without breaking public finances but by cutting unproductive public spending and continuing the fight against corruption and tax evasion. In Europe we need the golden rule - that is, the deduction from national budgets of investment expenditure - and we need Eurobonds to support large infrastructure projects. Instead, what is not needed is populism that promises heaven and earth knowing that it cannot maintain or by passing the costs on to future generations and to the governments to come. Let the Italians remember this when voting next February.
2012 was a very difficult year for Italy but it was also a year which, despite the grip of the recession, sparked the hope of being able to make it. But only by changing and reforming and only shelving the illusions of the most pernicious populism. Mario Draghi and Mario Monti have shown us how. Thanks to both of you. Yes, we can.
