Il link between investment and reforms is the backbone of the PNRR presented by the Draghi Government to the European Commission, not only to be able to take advantage of the generous resources made available by Europe, but also to relaunch our country's growth after twenty years of stagnation or recession, considering above all that the enormous rise in public debt will have to be faced and that the monetary policy of the ECB cannot be eternally expansionary.
Two essays collected in Astrid Review: one by Claudio De Vincenti and Marcello Messori entitled "Innovation, market and public intervention" and the other by the President of Astrid, Franco Bassanini, which is attached below in its complete version and is entitled "The reforms, the constraint European external relations and the governance of the PNRR: lessons from a past experience”.
It is no coincidence that Bassanini remembers what happened 25 years ago (1996-8) in the first Prodi government, of which he was Minister of Public Administration and Regional Affairs. That too was a season of important reforms, although not all destined to produce the desired effects over time. But an OECD report acknowledged that Italy had made "impressive progress" in regulating thesavingof the market work and school and bureaucratic simplification and modernization of the administration, paradoxically appreciated more in France than in Italy.
"A part of those reforms - writes Bassanini - has produced lasting effects over time, while another part has remained unimplemented or has proved to be ephemeral". But what was the factor that determined the success of that season of reforms and which, at the same time, explains the subsequent failure to implement some of them? According to Bassanini, it was decisive the European external constraint. The Prodi government decided to do everything necessary to enter the European Monetary Union from the very first moment and this was the springboard for successfully tackling the reforms, but it is true that, however important it was, it was a short-term constraint.
“With the entry into the EMU in May 1998, the goal was achieved and the external constraint disappeared“, Bassanini recounts, revealing what the Minister of the Treasury, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who with Prime Minister Romano Prodi had been the main architect of the season of reforms told him in those days: “Franco, we have a problem. In these two years, the goal of the euro and the European bond have allowed us to overcome cultural obstacles, political opposition, bureaucratic and corporate resistance. Now that they are gone, what do we replace them with? The risk – Ciampi continued – is that propulsive thrust is exhausted and that even the reforms that have already been launched cannot be completed. We need to meet, you and I, to find a goal and, if possible, substitute constraints. It is an equally convincing narrative” of the one that had accompanied Italy's entry into the euro from the very first moment.
What is the relationship between that season and that experience and the current one of the Next Generation Eu and the Draghi Government's PNRR? “More than twenty years have passed and a season of reforms has begun and, once again, it is supported by a European bond. But – says Bassanini – there are important differences, almost all positive“. The first difference is that today the European bond is not short-term but medium-term: six years instead of two. And that matters. But there is also another novelty, even more relevant, namely that the European bond is accompanied a substantial amount of additional resourcesessential for carrying out the reforms.
This is why today – is Bassanini's reasoning – “the European bond can be the engine of a new season of reforms with greater strength and with greater continuity and effectiveness than the same type of bond even did in the short season of the end of the XNUMXs”. The fact that the European bond lasts for six years, that it is accompanied by substantial financial resources helps and it also helps that the reforms are being carried out by a government with a strong technical caliber supported by a bipartisan parliamentary majority of a very broad coalition, which makes the risk that, however the next political elections go, the future Government will think about canceling all the reforms.
But it is fundamental the governance of the PNRR, on which, according to Bassanini, "it would be good to distinguish and leave the direction and monitoring of the investment plans and projects envisaged by the PNRR to the Minister of Economy and Finance, but reserve to the Prime Minister, assisted by the Undersecretary of the Presidency, the direction and coordination of the definition and implementation of the reforms, which represent an essential component of the PNRR, including, when necessary, a power of direct intervention to unlock disagreements and vetoes".
