New globalization, state-market relationship, industrial policy: they are the challenges awaiting Italy and the European Union in the post pandemic. The cataclysm of Covid-19 has overwhelmed our lives and the Cartesian axes on which the economic and productive world was based until recently. How and where to start again? The former premier spoke about it today in a web seminar organized by the University of Parma Romano Prodi, the columnist former director of Corriere della Sera Ferruccio De Bortoli and entrepreneurs Lucia Aleotti (Menarini pharmaceuticals) and Maurizio Marchesini (owner of the packaging company of the same name), with an introduction by Professor Franco Mosconi which, for this appointment, has chosen the title: "Enterprises and industrial policy for the post-Covid, the Next Generation Eu, the pandemic, the Europe to come".
We understood that the aggressive new coronavirus has swept away many of the certainties we had about a year ago when in Italy masks were not found, which are basic products mostly manufactured in China. Other glimpses of how painful a globalization dictated by market and price needs and not too regulated can be came with the lack of respirators. “I keep this iconic object on my table – says Marchesini – it's a diving valve which, with a three-D printer, we transformed into a valve for breathing apparatus. We don't know who designed it, we received a file and we made it, inserting it into our daily production, without interrupting the rest. Because we can do it thanks to our machines, but above all thanks to young designers who make them work and think in the right way". A big alarm bell then sounded with the vaccines, considered until yesterday the Cinderella of pharmaceutical products, irrelevant for stock market analysts and easy to reproduce in series, mostly the prerogative of India. “Well, today an ice age has passed since then – observes Aleotti – and we realize that industrial policy must be integrated with real life, especially in our fundamental sector, where the complexity is great. I wonder: we still want to rely on globalisation that points to the maximum low?”. The answer is no and the anti-crisis vaccine for the economy is an industrial policy at a continental and national level, a State-market relationship based on the relationship with those who work in the field. Certainly in Italy the governments often change and the interlocutors are never the same, so we move back and forth a lot like prawns and without being able to conclude much.
Instead, we need to manage this new globalization e bring a series of productions back to the European home, but doing it is not easy and it is necessary to take action to make it possible, especially since there are great interests against it.
"Are we getting ready for reshoring? – asks Prodi – In Europe we are probably doing it, but in Italy we are not prepared for the return of activities. We should choose two or three specialized areas, because reshoring is conquered and there are sectors where we compete with Germany. I am convinced that this could be an excellent opportunity for the Mezzogiorno. We have to locate the right sectors and place them near the big universities of the south who are ready, such as Naples, Bari, Palermo and Catania, giving aid in a big way. I'm not talking about Bologna, which helps itself. Because the reality is that the country is suffering from Covid, but the industry is holding up well. The tertiary sector is especially bad”.
Another problem of the Italian system is the industrial dwarfism, even if the fabric holds thanks to the supply chain. “Italian companies are not growing – observes Marchesini – and this prevents the realization of huge projects”.
Those who always fly high are the United States. “We have seen it with vaccines – underlines De Bortoli – the state behaved like a blind investor and in the end it was right. It is a field where patents are essential to obtain results, but for public health reasons there are property rights that should be shared. It is a contradiction that remains unresolved”.
For Prodi"the Americans bet and won. Biontech is Turkish-German, but owned by Pfizer, an American multinational. This brings me to some macroeconomic considerations. China, even in 2020, grew by about 2%. The United States have lost 4%, against 8-10% of Europeans and what makes the most impression is that this year the United States will grow by 4%, because they have deployed a quantity of economic resources that I don't have never seen in history. To return to 2019 levels, Italy will have to wait for 2023. Now there is the Next Generation Eu, but it must be spent quickly, the space is now. Yet there are two weeks left before the presentation and nothing is known about it yet”.
Il Next Generation Eu on the other hand it is the biggest step that Europe has managed to take towards a new way of relating, of existing as a union, but will it be enough to win the global challenge?
“The question we ask ourselves today – concludes Mosconi – is: is this an irreversible step towards a federal EU, with a budget anyway and Eurobonds? Or, once again, will we waste the opportunity?”
