In the now increasingly heated competition between Italy and France in the most strategic sectors of industry, a new case emerges which seems to be a photocopy of the story, by no means closed, of StMicroelectronics (microchip production). The new case concerns Prysmian, a manufacturer of cables and optical fibers with a turnover of 16 billion and listed on the Piazza Affari. In recent days the Minister of Business and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, has launched an appeal to the company to keep the Fos factory in Battipaglia, which it intends to close, alive for another three months, revealing the existence of a purchase offer which in his opinion should be considered. Leaving aside the fact that it was perhaps inappropriate for a member of the government to communicate the existence of a proposal concerning a listed company, in essence, Urso’s effort is understandable given that the Fos of Battipaglia employs 300 workers and represents one of the few cutting-edge industrial centers in the South.
Its closure would have a heavy impact on the Salerno area while a thorny dispute would arise for the Meloni government to manage, a bit like the Whirlpool dispute in Naples in Conte 1, 2018. But this is another story and concerns manufacturing, such as household appliances, which follows a global logic. The problems of productions such as semiconductors and optical fiber, given their strategic nature, often have more political roots. And the pattern repeats itself: the French government and authorities have moved in time to attract Western fiber optic producers who are suffering from ruthless Chinese competition, while the Italian one has very slowly become aware that in order to convince Prysmian not to close the Fos plant of Battipaglia, should have looked for a way to modify the public tenders for supplies, which, by not rewarding technology and quality, represent an open window for low-cost Asian productions. In essence, telecommunications operators such as Telecom and Open Fiber continue to supply themselves with fiber at the best possible cost for them, having no obligation to favor national production.
Conversely, in France the same types of operators buy domestic or Italian fibre, which they consider to be of superior quality. Thus, Prysmian began to consolidate more and more in the country beyond the Alps and to consider Battipaglia’s Fos as a burden. A similar mechanism has occurred, in another field, with StMicroelectronics, which is moving its interests to French territory where state support for the semiconductor industry is very strong. A “betrayal” that Palazzo Chigi would have badly digested to the point of trying to hinder the renewal of the mandate of the current CEO, the Frenchman Jean Marc Chery, at the assembly to be held on May 22nd (we’ll see, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to exist obstacles to Chery’s confirmation). However, there is a fundamental difference between the two cases, Prysmian and StM. While for microchips the game is more difficult for Italy because France has allocated public funding of 2.9 billion for the new Grenoble plant as part of the “chips act”, resources that Palazzo Chigi probably has more difficulty with to find in lean times, France has not spent a single euro on fiber optics, still achieving the result of favoring national and European production over Chinese production. Already before 2020, the government involved Arcep, which is equivalent to the Italian Agcom, the communications guarantee authority, in defining the quality standards of public tenders for supplies, identifying a grid of criteria that rewards European producers.
Since there is nothing similar in Italy, the European tenders of the “Italy 1 Giga Plan”, which were promoted by the Draghi government as part of the Pnrr in 2021-22, also providing 6 billion in incentives to encourage telephone operators to invest in areas not covered by broadband, they have necessarily given space to market criteria. Agcom, marginally involved in an initial phase, entered the scene in 2023 when a law from the Meloni government essentially asked the authority to follow the French example. Agcom has developed a document which is now being examined by the European Commission. Once it has received the green light, within two or three months, the new quality standards can be applied to new tenders. This is why Urso asks Prysmian to wait, as long as it is not too late.
