Svimez has been sounding the alarm for months. Attention, he repeats: the economic and social gap that has divided Italy in two for over a century is a problem that does not only concern the South, but affects the entire country. Svimez put it on paper in a document ("A development policy to start growing again") drawn up with twenty other southern institutes and presented on the eve of the general elections to solicit the parties' commitment on this issue. An invitation which, however, received a very bland, if any, reception from the recipients.
But the Association for the development of industry in the South (as the "baptismal name" of this authoritative research institute says) has reproposed it several times by presenting that document in various cities. Also in Milan, where three months ago its president, Adriano Giannola, affirmed that "the austerity policy is leading to the implosion of the whole system, in the North and in the South". A worried forecast that Professor Giannola reiterated in more detail in an interview published on May 14 on Firstonline. “It is the whole of Italy that has started, and not from today, on a path of economic decline. Decline which – the president of Svimez said in that interview – the global crisis has certainly accelerated, but which had already begun in 1998, that is the year in which the most prosperous Italy stopped growing”.
In support of those concerns there was (and is always valid) a long battery of figures that Svimez disclosed in detail on Friday 26 July, on the occasion of the diffusion of the anticipations of the Annual Report on the economy in the South, which will be presented at the end of September. Figures that are the thermometer of that decline which, as Svimez claims, unites the more advanced Italy and the weaker Italy. To which the global crisis, but also and perhaps above all the choices of men, are reserving a parallel destiny full of difficulties that it seems almost impossible to overcome.
There is one figure, among those listed by the director of Svimez Riccardo Padovani in his presentation of the report's previews, which undoubtedly confirms the concerns expressed in this first half of the year by the president Adriano Giannola. And it is the negative difference between the cumulative growth rate of Italy's gross domestic product and those of other European countries in the period from 2001 to 2012. It is a difference of over 12 percentage points, in fact, the one that separates the very modest 1,6% increase in GDP (in eleven years!) of our country from the 14% of France (which also suffers from significant problems) and Germany, and from 21% of Spain, whose situation economic and social situation is certainly more serious than ours but which has had the ability to make the best use of European financial support from its side.
Confirming the interruption, underlined by Padovani, of the accumulation process "in both parts of the country" is then the data concerning the collapse, in the five-year period of the global crisis, of gross fixed investments. Precipitation of almost 26% in the South, but 22% in the Center and North. Percentages to which the significant reduction in investments recorded by the construction sector in the broader period 2001-2012 also contributed, even more marked in the central-northern regions (24,5%) than in the south (23,5%) .
Now, if Svimez indicates with a wealth of data the persistence (and even the accentuation) of the gap between the two major divisions of the country, someone could say that this is her task. Everyone is then free to support (or contest) the thesis of those who attribute the responsibility for the development delay of that area to the citizens, the business system and the public administrations of the South itself. Everyone is then free to consider (or not) responsible the national institutions and political forces as well as the regional and local ones.
But when a southern economic research institute such as Svimez registers a decline of this magnitude also in the central-northern area, and when at the same time Eurostat, the statistical institute of the European Union, signals the retreat in terms of GDP per capita of our central-northern regions (here we are talking about Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Piedmont) compared to the more advanced ones in Europe, then it is right to try to understand the reasons. And the responsibilities. Which must be sought at a local, regional, national and even European level.
At the local and regional level, it is no secret that in many realities the accusations of those who say that the level of preparation of bureaucratic personnel is insufficient and those of those who argue that public administrators often let themselves be guided only by electoral evaluations are justified. But we cannot overlook the fact that Italy's botched half-federalism has further burdened the constraints imposed by the Brussels bureaucracy until yesterday. Even if now, however, the European Commissioner for Regional Policy Johannes Hahn is recommending to the Regions to submit projects for the next seven-year programming as soon as possible, concentrating European resources on a few but effective initiatives aimed at economic growth and the fight against unemployment.
Moving on to the national level, one cannot help but note the persistent quarrels between the political forces which, forced by a bizarre electoral law to an unnatural coexistence that has nothing to do with the Grosse Koalition of Teutonic memory, get by on the one hand squabbling on the rules for the primaries and on the other waiting for the outcome of Berlusconi's trials.
While the worthy people who make up the government manage among other things, in the context of the political fragility of the alliance that supports the executive, to commit themselves to extending the ban on smoking in schools also to courtyards decreed (rightly) by the then minister Sirchia . And in the meantime they are trying to extricate themselves from the European openings and closures which, at least until the German general elections in September, will continue to prevent Italy from being able to launch, without thereby putting the national budget on the ball, a growth policy worthy of this first name. A policy in objective support of which we could consider the results of a very recent study by Unicredit which shows that our heavy public debt is equal to about 22% of the net wealth of Italian families, a ratio substantially equal to that of Germany and of the United States. And such, perhaps, as to give rise to some timid doubts about the sustainability of such severe judgments on the size of our debt.
