We are immersed in a crisis that has roots outside the functioning of our economies. Attacks simultaneously be the question aggregated by the collapse of incomes and by the uncertainty that has taken over economic and social life, be the offer aggregate for the progressive disintegration of the European and global value chains and for the zeroing of orders. The public debate, and also the thermometer of public opinion, fluctuates between the expectation of a positive but still poorly defined change and regret for the world as it was. History tells us instead that the outcome of the phases of accelerated change that crises bring about is generally a new balance in which reality presents itself as a hybridization between the new and the old, a synthesis that is all the more stable, and all the more far from the starting point, the more politics has been able to implement effective and targeted government strategies.
A NEW EUROPEAN MARSHALL PLAN
It is therefore not surprising that we return insistently to look at the Marshall Plan as a source of inspiration and above all of encouragement to design a real structural adjustment plan for the future of the European economy. A call that came from the president Emmanuel Macron, throwing the Recovery Fund, by the OECD Secretary-General Angel Guria, by the Portuguese leader, by the same Ursula von der Leyen. Of course, much has changed in the years that followed a war that bequeathed Europe material and moral rubble together with the unprecedented zeroing of the economies of nations. Today we have a different horizon before us and above all no one is isolated, we have the tools of a European collaboration which, however in difficulty and deprived of its best driving force, is called to stand the test of time. However, profound differences are accompanied by themes and issues that still make the American plan a good point of reference today.
THE DIFFERENCES FROM THE ORIGINAL MARSHALL PIANO…
Let's start with the most obvious diversity. In the 1947 plan was used to create an anti-Soviet area economically unitary and was part of a project of a new European and international order. This was to find its main source of stability in the ability to prevent the resurgence of economic nationalism, entrusting the large international institutions with the task of implementing the agreements Bretton Woods, and placing an order based on the economic and monetary cooperation between nations, on the freedom of trade, on the stability of exchange rates, on the control of the movement of destabilizing capitals. A multilateral international system which today, as Saccomanni wrote in his latest interesting book, under the pressure of US unilateralism and others, presents alarming cracks which are producing the fragmentation of the international system and ever greater difficulties in its governance.
Another obvious but profound difference consists in the fact that it was an intervention entirely financed by the United States, while today we are faced with the need but also with the possibility, unlike the very difficult conditions in which we found ourselves then, to finance it with entirely our own resources, with a commitment in which Europe saves itself, also by relaunching domestic demand and the large domestic market in the face of the possibility of a long and complicated depression in a world that could see business and growth opportunities progressively shrink.
…AND THE COMMON POINTS
Instead, we need the unique and unprecedented ability of the Marshall Plan to hold together in a performing mechanism the objectives that were proposed and the tools that were identified for their realization. The plan was in fact an extraordinary tool for the transformation of European capitalism which, in addition to benefiting from an important technological and managerial transfer, led to a partial transformation of economic, institutional and cultural structures and has been a source of experimentation and innovation for businesses.
Un Recovery Fund, supported by the European Recovery Bonds or in any case from a common long-term debt, could not only save the European economies from recession but realistically set itself some objectives of strengthening and transforming European economies. Among them is the need to strengthen some sectors which are, and perhaps even more so in the future, strategic in facing and opposing the right resilience to possible new systemic risks: healthcare it is certainly one of them as are other public goods such as local infrastructure, research, training, the balanced diffusion of digital technologies. Sectoral objectives that can be the emerging tips of a more general process of transformation of economies towards sustainable and inclusive growth.
What European Green Deal which the Commission has proposed as the new common political scenario to combine growth with the protection of our natural capital. The tools for a just transition are already being developed and the Green Deal could offer the underlying framework for a new Europe that takes us out of the health and economic emergency and also brings the system differences that appear increasingly evident between North and South closer together of Europe.
From this point of view the state returns to play an important role, but not as a simple provider of resources as unfortunately seems to emerge in Italy. And from this point of view, the Marshall Plan has one last important lesson to indicate. Its undisputed success was in fact due to several factors. Among them stands out the extraordinary work that technicians of recognized skills and strong civil tension carried out in the public and private apparatuses of the European States, managing to compete with the national and international dimension of the planned investments, also through the OEEC, which later turned into the OECD and to which, among other things, one could eventually resort again, as read between the lines ofinterview on Corriere with its Secretary General.
It is evident that it is Recovery Fund, as was the case for the Marshall Plan with the "counterpart funds" whose use was linked to the adoption of policies for productivity, will also have to be subject to rules. Certainly also financial and accounting conditionalities but above all in recent weeks we need the ability to look at Europe as a large integrated and interdependent economic area, yesterday to be built, today to be renewed and defended.
°°°°° The author is full professor of Economic History at the University of Bari
