After the death of ICE was decreed in the budget maneuver, the initiatives put in place by the trade unions, parties and business organizations and those announced by many quarters all go in the opposite direction to each other, heralding a confusion of ideas and proposals that will not lead to any useful result for the public coffers and to that organizational rethinking necessary to support the export growth of small and medium-sized Italian enterprises.
Let's stick to the facts. What the Decree, approved today in the Senate and already being examined by the Chamber, enshrines is nothing more than a snapshot of a situation a few years old, which has emerged clearly for many months but has not been incorporated in its evidence by the Institute's top management . Yet the signals were numerous and absolutely evident: cuts in funds, constant calls to contain current expenditure, requests for actions to rationalize the system. Signals that fell on deaf ears. The Board of Ice (made up of four leading entrepreneurs and a long-time, well-experienced President we might say) limited itself to acknowledging the situation and postponing any initiative. For over six months the Institute was left without a Director General in the statutory powers to hire one a few days after the dissolution of ICE and the immediate cancellation of his function. Prepare the Ministry for a lawsuit for damages. In the meantime, President Vattani completed his traditional 200 days of mission abroad followed by a structure attentive to preserving the small certainties of foreign destinations or trade fair missions. Yet whoever knows the Institute knows of a band of highly professional executives and middle managers, masters of two or three languages, capable of constructing commercial paths even in extremely difficult conditions (we want to recall the work of the Offices in Kuwait, Iraq, China which was he facing the market?)
In January, the president of Confindustria Emma Marcegaglia proclaimed: "We will reform the ICE and we will privatize it". Then nothing more. Silence. Only the day before yesterday did Vice President Alberto Bombassei give voice to some of the concerns of the categories in order to spend his time with a choice in favor of an Agency that refers to the Farnesina. We are all old in the trade for not knowing that Confindustria has now entered the blank semester and nothing will move until a new President crosses the threshold of Viale dell'Astronomia.
The plenipotentiary of Minister Romani presented himself at ICE to order the managers not to sign anything and not to take decisions other than the very strict ones of ordinary administration. The Unions picketed the Senate building and the one in via XX Settembre from time to time in the tired ritual of a corporate defense of prerogatives that had long since crumbled.
Some sectors of the former Ministry of Foreign Trade dream of the return (with Adolfo Urso) of the Sportelli Italia; the other half is booked in the event that the Farnesina acts as a reference ministry dreaming of foreign destinations for itself. Minister Romani vacillates between the promise to keep the Institute at home, promised for some time to the chamber system.
At this point, courage and coherence are needed on the part of Minister Frattini and of the entire diplomatic structure: the only one able to quickly put the control of foreign markets back on their feet, to close the excessively heavy presence of the Institute on domestic ones, to "exploit" to the fullest the very good that exists within the professionalism of many employees of the historic Institute of Foreign Trade.
* Former Ice General Manager
