For Italy, 2016 is forecast with positive growth, but very slow and in any case lower than that of almost all the other countries in the Eurozone. This comes after a long recession, deeper than in other countries, and after at least two decades of anemic growth.
These data lead many to ask for more expansionary budgetary policies, but, as Minister Padoan keeps repeating, Italy is one of the few countries in the world "that has zero fiscal space", i.e. that it cannot afford further policy easing budget. Instead, the request to strengthen the Juncker plan so that it becomes a true engine of European growth deserves greater political support. In the meantime, however, we must not be discouraged: Italy's growth differential can only be tackled by strengthening and accelerating the reform programme.
The crucial point is that some important reforms are only in the mind of the legislator, others have been made, but they are not yet sufficient or have not yet had the time to unfold their effects on the competitive capacity of companies and on the perception of economic operators. The reforms of the electoral law and of the Constitution are decisive, but they will produce practical effects only in the long term, as the functionality of the institutions and the quality of legislative production improve.
The reform of the Public Administration is only now reaching the milestone of the delegated decrees and, if all goes well, it will have concrete consequences after 2018. A turning point has not yet been reached on the reform of the judiciary and on competition. But even reforms that have already been successfully implemented take time to fully realize their positive effects. The labor reform is bringing some benefits, but it takes time for a jurisprudence to accumulate that convinces companies that the world has really changed. The Fornero reform itself, decisive as regards Italy's international reliability and therefore our ability to attract investment, will not fully produce its positive effects as long as the doubt remains that Italy can go back and reintroduce early exit options , which would greatly reduce its stabilizing capacity.
Our country therefore navigates in the stormy sea of international markets with the ballast of old problems that have started to be resolved but have not yet been resolved, and with that of old cultures and mentalities. And this sets in motion a vicious circle made up of low investments, slow recovery, persistent difficulties on the labor market, distrust, strong corporate resistance. In this context, Italy appears to international investors as a nation marked by too high a degree of political, as well as economic and financial, uncertainty. Few believe the polls according to which in the next political elections the Five Star Movement could beat the Democratic Party in the ballots, but everyone knows that it is not an impossible scenario – perhaps in conjunction with a new crisis of a small bank or with some scandal, it doesn't matter if true or artfully invented. If this were to happen, it would be a problem for Italy, but Europe too would not last a week. This scenario is perhaps less probable, but certainly more serious than a possible Brexit or a Greek exit from the euro. This dossier too, as they say, should be – clearly visible – on Juncker's table.
