Woe to those who only dare to think that in economics "mal common is half joy". Only a dangerously illiterate could rejoice in the face of the freezing German economy and the stagnation of the French one: all this does not alleviate our pains at all but unfortunately multiplies them. For a very simple reason: that Germany is our main outlet market in Europe and if the German economy slows down and its GDP, also due to the effect of geopolitical tensions and anti-Russian sanctions, becomes even negative, there is no need to be Einstein to understand that our exporting companies will have some more problems.
After all, do you remember how Italy got back into recession? The analysis of GDP fall (-0,2% in the April-June quarter) speaks for itself: it is true that consumption and investments show no signs of recovery and show no sign of restarting domestic demand but the real and alarming news of the last quarter is a another and it is exactly the retreat of our exports, which even in the most difficult periods had been one of the few strong points for the Italian economy. In today's "Foglio" Professor Francesco Forte wonders whether the anti-Russia sanctions, while very much shared from the point of view of principles, don't actually end up harming Europe more than Putin's empire. And certainly the Ukrainian crisis and the simultaneous intensification of so many hotbeds of tension and so many geopolitical stresses are one more tile on our fragile economies, but this does not erase the urgency of a deeper reflection on the destiny of the Eurozone.
If seven years after the beginning of the crisis America came out with growth of its economy still weak but still fluctuating between 2 and 3% and the Eurozone is instead divided between recession and stagnation it is clear that the different recipes that have been adopted on both sides of the Atlantic have given different results and that one-way austerity – which is something completely different from rigor, which is indeed necessary, in view of development – has been the last mistake that the Old Continent could make. And another is to imagine that Germany is now completely changing course: perhaps Berlin will convince itself of greater budget flexibility but let us get out of our heads that, faced with its own difficulties, it is ready to give its partners discounts on European economic policy.
If anything, the matter is different and concerns the urgency that all of Europe should question itself on its perennial growth gap compared to other areas of the world and on the imperative need to start a profound rethinking of its own Welfare, of the problems of aging of its societies , of the effects of the demographic crisis and of a globalization not intelligently managed. It is true that Germany was among the first to make reforms under Schroeder's government, which in fact lost the elections because of this, but not even Berlin can think of living off an income and it is time for Mrs Merkel herself to roll up her sleeves and you go back to opening the building site of reforms.
If this applies to Germany, let alone the others. When will France wake up from the slumber and immobilism that are plunging it into full crisis? Not to mention of course Italy: unfortunately the reforms are not enough to announce them but they have to be done for real knowing that their effects will not be immediate. Unlike in the past, today Italy has a premier who links his personal destiny to the reforms, but as we have seen from the torments of the Senate, not even Renzi, beyond his personal will, has the magic wand.
We would then need a common step across Europe, without this excluding for us the ineluctability of continuing to do our homework. And perhaps it is precisely this, beyond the instrumental mystifications that are always around the corner, that Mario Draghi wanted to say in his last press conference at the ECB when he asked for the partial transfer of national sovereignty of the member countries to Europe.
Faced with the growth emergency and beyond the unconventional tools that the ECB has said it is ready to put in place, the time has perhaps returned, as Andrea Bonanni acutely recalled in "la Repubblica", to dust off the so-called "contractual agreements ” on the basis of which a government undertakes to carry out precise structural reforms in certain times in exchange for a temporary postponement of the budgetary adjustments foreseen by the current rules and Treaties. It is a realistic hypothesis that it is in Italy's interest to explore. Provided that the bilateral "contractual agreements" with Brussels are valid for everyone: for Italy but also for France and, why not?, for Germany.
