The editorial by Roberto Napoletano l’Altravoce dell’Italia EUROPEAN LOCOMOTIVE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

We need to overcome the fragmentations that block the future of all Europeans, but it is a fact that after Covid and Putin’s tanks in Ukraine, Italy goes from being at the rear to becoming the first carriage of the European train. We have seen first-hand the extraordinary productive vitality that the new Italian South has found, making it the center of a world that exports values ​​of growth and solidarity with a link between businesses, universities, research centers and start-ups that know how to combine new technologies and the new needs of people. Who speaks operationally with Africa knowing that it has changed a lot.

Thanks to Feuromed, WE have understood in a granitic way something that we thought we already knew, but which all the men of action who intervened confirmed to us, categorically denying the language and contents of the men of numbers. This something we are talking about is that the representation we are giving to the world of us is that of before Covid and the Russian invasion war in Ukraine. These two events instead completely changed the strategic geographical axes of the world and contributed to building a new future. Covid has taught us that we can no longer be alone. The war in the heart of Europe has given us a reversal of the cardinal points of development, replacing the privileged East-West relationship with the very complicated South-North axis which relaunches the Italian South as the safest and most regulated of the South of the world marked by the African powder keg and the Middle Eastern conflict. Compared to these two great global shocks, Europe and Italy, even more so, reacted more quickly and effectively than the others.

Faced with the pandemic crisis, Europe made vaccines first of all and made a common debt with the NextGeneration Eu to encourage the economic restart after a long, interminable season of errors resulting from excessive austerity which multiplied, instead of reducing, the disastrous effects of previous international crises, the first financial and the second sovereign debt. On the basis of this innovative choice, which allowed us to compete on equal terms, and thanks to our capabilities, Italy managed to completely reverse the European history of being at the bottom of the list which began in the two-year period 2008/2009 which coincides with the first major crisis international. Italy has now received from Europe what was previously even taken away from it and has been able to put its productive capital to good use at home and abroad, showing more dynamism in emerging from energy mono-dependence on Putin who offered us a raw material good, but still at a higher price than what was offered to its German and French competitors.

The whole of Europe was totally dependent on Russia because the Germany of Merkel and Schröder had wanted it that way. It is no coincidence that the crisis of that East-West strategic relationship has been fully reflected in today’s Germany, which has fallen into economic recession and, even before that, into a state of political confusion, social unease, and growing right-wing sovereignist impulses. In the face of all this, in these three years, at Feuromed we have been able to experience first-hand the extraordinary productive vitality that the new South has rediscovered, making it the center of a world that exports values ​​of growth and solidarity. All the entrepreneurs, company heads and rectors who spoke recalled the social value of the company. Faced with the sadness of the data, a new bond has been created between universities, research centers and start-ups to combine new technologies and people’s new needs.

Attention, this is the point, if we want to create a Mediterranean that looks towards Africa we must also start from the needs there, but above all being aware that Africa has changed. A new Africa has arisen that looks entirely at the Mediterranean and perfectly interprets the basic intuition of this festival which places the Mediterranean as a future challenge for all of Europe. Our African friends have told us that the challenge of the entire continent of hope converges here to overcome the great difficulty in basic industries that we ourselves had and have lost and face the great digital challenge together. Here, Africa and Europe, through Italy, can rediscover their possibility of growth built on those values ​​of solidarity and development that belong to the culture of our businesses, especially those in the South.

We need political courage and an impressive financial effort that only a truly unified Europe can give to Mediterranean universities and the exchange of technical specializations supported by a single chapter of the European budget. A Europe that overcomes the fragmentations that are the real brake on the economic, political and civil development of the Old Continent.