Europe has an opportunity to find itself, betting on a welfare for economic development that you pass through one common industrial policy and leverage on Research. The model to be inspired by is CERN in Geneva, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, leader in its field, born in 1954 from the agreement of 12 member states and expanded over time to another 22 plus some observers, including non-European states.
Come on in a few hours election results for the renewal of the European Parliament, Romano Prodi returns to the issues that have been dear to him for a lifetime and, having overcome the great fear of a sovereign victory in Brussels, shows the Union a way to relaunch an economic (but ultimately also ideal) project and to try to keep pace with the United States and China.
The occasion is the Young Innovators Award, the Italian edition of the Global Award of the MIT (Boston) magazine Technology Review Italia in collaboration with the Bologna Business School of the University of Bologna. A two-day meeting and testimonials attended, among others, by Roberto Battiston, former president of the Italian Space Agency and David Rotman, editor of MIT Technology Review.
“Even Germany – says Prodi – which invests several billions in research, in particular on artificial intelligence, cannot stand the global comparison on its own, because the gap with the Americans or the Chinese is too great. We Italians can draw inspiration from the Germans who, in an exemplary way, jointly carry out basic research with the Max Planck institutes and applied research at the service of production with the Fraunhofer chain. I believe that this strategy would be good for everyone, but reality tells us that the European system should act in a coordinated way and taking into account the specificities of individual countries and each one's industrial vocation”.
Of course, today Europe cannot be compared to the United States, both in terms of the extent of resources, and in terms of the relationship between institutions and businesses, and in terms of the development of some leading sectors which find in the US an abysmal advantage over us. “But we can in turn use public money for large innovation projects of continental significance taking into account and, consequently, enhancing national specificities". The US has pushed the accelerator on artificial intelligence, life sciences and many other cutting-edge fields but is also suffering from a continuous decrease in public funds. American superiority in many fields is beyond question, so we need to focus on innovative sectors in which European competition is still possible. With an appropriate strategy and adequate means, the balance of forces can change.
“Who, just a few years ago, could have thought that the Chinese Huawei could compete with the American giants in the very sector in which they dominate the world? With the battle for 5G began the challenge for technological supremacy, a much tougher challenge than the trade war. On the latter, in fact, the two superpowers – observes Prodi – will be able to find a compromise, because the commercial and productive ties between the two giants are too intertwined to arrive at a total break. In the war for technological supremacy, which by definition directly affects military supremacy, it is much more difficult to find the necessary compromises".
On the other hand, Europe cannot stand by and must put fuel in the engine, pushing with particular attention to the innovations linked to its manufacturing vocation. “Today – adds the professor – I see two great driving forces for European development: a vigorous research policy and a great project of welfare policies put into difficulty by the economic crisis. The future of Europe passes through these two pillars: research guarantees the future of our children and the necessary sense of solidarity between Europe and its citizens passes through a new welfare system. It is clear that being inspired by CERN does not mean imitating its characteristics, which are unique and inimitable, but understanding that something works because we are all inside it, with an overall vision capable of aggregating energies that come from the most diverse directions, as made the United States in the past decades”.
And Europe has already lost enough opportunities. “Think of Galileo, a civilian satellite navigation and positioning system with which we started, first in Europe in the world: launched more than fifteen years ago but not yet finished because, faced with the reservations of some European states, there was a lack of strong politics”. If the Union is making strength at the European level, coordination at the national level should be even more urgent. A red thread should finally link universities, research centres, our pocket multinationals and what little remains of the great Italian company. “On this point, the European government system that gave birth to the 'PlanS' is becoming active, the objective of which is the maximum possible opening to the circulation of scientific knowledge and which we hope will be implemented by all. Naturally – concludes Prodi – nothing can be achieved without the courage to mobilize the necessary resources. With the current abundance of financial resources available, the objective is certainly not unattainable by an economic system larger than the American one, such as the European Union still is today. There is already a realistic and articulated project, prepared by the public financial structures of the 28 members of the European Union for a financing of over 100 billion euros a year to relaunch welfare. It is not difficult to build such a project for the revival of research. Of course, if you don't want to do it, you will never find the financial resources to do it".
