The economic recovery of an Italy that is increasingly dull and almost resigned, at best, to being content with slow-motion growth cannot do without a strong push to relaunch the development of the South. Svimez has been supporting this for years with the comfort, manifested several times, of the convinced encouragement of Giorgio Napolitano. And he reiterates it once again in his Annual Report on the economy of the South, presented yesterday in Rome, with the support of factual data and figures that represent the last resort of the progressive retreat of a macro-area inhabited by 20 million people (one population that exceeds that of most of the EU Member States) towards a position of extreme marginality in the European context. A position towards which – affirms Svimez – all of Italy risks slipping.
To avert this prospect and overcome the serious competitiveness crisis that has characterized the Italian economy for more than ten years – is the thesis supported by Svimez – it is urgently necessary to activate a national strategy to “restart a dynamic of convergence”. With the aim of allowing the South to restart with significantly higher growth rates than those of the Centre-North, which in any case should also embark on a robust growth path.
An objective that up to now it has not even been possible to attempt to pursue – argues the president of Svimez Adriano Giannola – because, not only in Italy but above all in the European Union, “the preference has been given to an economic policy approach focused on public in the sign of an austerity as an end in itself”. The maximum goal of which could only be a modest cyclical recovery in growth, in any case unable to bring national GDP back even to the level of 2007, ie before the explosion of the global economic-financial crisis.
“The question is – clarifies the president of Svimez – that, in order to try to overcome the historic dualism between North and South, the prospect of economic growth is not enough. Instead, we need to aim with determination at a structural economic development of the whole nation. A topic on which unfortunately there has been great silence in our country”. That is why - he adds - Svimez "aims instead at a national strategy whose common thread should be represented by an active development policy in the context of a design that sees the State play the role of director". And therefore to take responsibility for the choices. That is, of the function that is, or should be, the main prerogative of politics.
From this point of view, Giannola lists what, according to Svimez, are the keys capable of opening the doors to the development of the South. “A strong Euro-Mediterranean policy above all. The Mediterranean – he says – is the center of trade between Asia and Europe, and between Africa and our continent. However, most of the ships coming from the East sail away from Gibraltar towards Rotterdam or Hamburg: five more days of navigation, therefore more pollution and greater fuel consumption. Were there ports and above all equipped rear ports, the goods could be landed in Italy. From where to continue towards the countries of Central and Northern Europe, in the opposite direction to the current transport directions.
Furthermore, a development policy in the South cannot do without a strong recovery in investments, is the request of Svimez. And the overcoming of that competitive asymmetry which penalizes Italy to the advantage of the member states of Eastern Europe which joined the EU 10 years ago and which are still outside the euro area: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Countries that do not have the constraints of the Eurozone, which can use the weapon of devaluation or revaluation of their respective currencies, which have labor costs much lower than ours, and which can establish advantageous tax regimes for foreign investors.
The president of Svimez then complains about the general disengagement that seemed to have removed the southern question from the country's collective political consciousness for many years. Years during which, he says, "all sorts of things were heard". Like, for example, the "fairy tale" according to which the manufacture of our South would have been higher than the Finnish one. “Of course… Southern Italy has 20 million or more inhabitants, Finland 5 million. It would have been better to relate these data with the number of inhabitants of the two areas”, comments Giannola now.
And what is the approach of politicians, more specifically of the government, faced with the persistently delayed development of the South? Graziano Delrio, undersecretary to the Prime Minister, is there, next to Giannola, to represent the government. And, albeit in a context that is still not sufficiently defined in the European context (the 300 billion investments announced by the president of the new Brussels Commission Jean-Claude Juncker are additional resources or reallocations of appropriations already foreseen in the seven-year EU budget?) and also national, undertakes to clarify what the objectives of the executive are.
Delrio first wonders if public intervention in the economy still makes sense. And he says that it does, indeed. Adding that the European cohesion policy is in a position to offer substantial support for investments (for Italy between now and 2020 there are around 200 billion, even better if Brussels accepts the request not to include the national co-financing of the Structural Funds in the calculation of the deficit with respect to GDP), that the rebirth of the South is possible (as happened to East Germany at the time of German unification), and that the southern question is a problem that concerns the entire country.
As for the question of whether Italy is following the right path, the Undersecretary to the Prime Minister replies that "no, more could be done". That "nobody should lose a single euro of European resources due to blind obedience to the stability pact" (but isn't it really the government that obliges local authorities to respect it?). That the inertia of a Region (Calabria) is unacceptable, whose officials in four months have not examined even one of the thousands of applications submitted for the Youth Guarantee. And that it is equally unacceptable that, compared to an allocation of 800 million for ports, only 100 have been used. "In cases like these, the funds must be diverted to other destinations", he says.
