Of PIETRO MASSIMO BUSETTA – Few years ago Giorgia Meloni he stated that Rome had all it takes to be the capital of Europe. But the reality is that the center of the Union has moved north.
While the decision-making centers of Europe are increasingly in reality Berlin and Paris, rather than Brussels and Strasbourg. But perhaps for the South it is also more convenient for the axis to move northwards, considering the results achieved by 162 years of Roman-centric government.
And in fact the South needs a governance that is less Northern and inattentive to its problems. Beyond the faults of the poor results achieved, there is no doubt that we are faced with a failure of the actions for the South. Faced with a country split in two, economically and socially, which is starting, with differentiated autonomy, also towards a constitutionally regulated split.
This is why the hope that remains is that of more Europe. For what hasn’t happened to happen, that is, what might seem very simple, to be able to give citizenship rights to a population of 20 million inhabitants.
Today that the Mediterranean has become central again, the interest in the area becomes increasingly evident, but also the danger that it will only be exploited without anything remaining in the territory.
The proposed concept of the country’s battery goes in this direction. Wind turbines that disfigure the beautiful hills of vineyards, solar systems that replace the gray green hills with metal expanses, regasification plants next to the Valley of the Temples as in the past the Gela refinery next to the Punic walls. And in exchange nothing in terms of employment.
Perhaps Europe, now blocked in the East by the war with the Russian Federation, can become a more attentive and less predatory interlocutor.
But in reality what is the South asking of Europe which is renewing its Parliament. The first request concerns control over the destination of structural funds. Too many times they have been used in Italy to replace the provision of ordinary resources.
Also the destination of the Pnrr funds, which seemed to have the objective of reducing economic gaps and therefore should be destined to increase the production base, given the indicators used for the distribution of resources, unemployment rate, overall population and per capita income , in reality a large part of it will go to finance the equalization of citizenship rights, losing sight of the real problem of the South which is the right to work. Rights that had to be financed with ordinary resources.
A second request concerns the replacement of automatic disengagement with the replacement of powers, in order to avoid penalizing the recipients of the interventions.
It is the approach used with the Pnrr which should be extended to all structural funds. The opportunity to link the provision of resources to the achievement of less random and more quantitative objectives, such as increasing GDP and increasing the number of employed people, is a third objective.
For too long we have played with approaches such as bottom-up development or trickle-down investments which, rather than having objectives of the common good, served to satisfy the ravenous clientele of an extractive ruling class, hungry for public resources. Another important objective in order not to penalize the territories of industrialized realities, where there are areas with delayed development, as in Italy, is a European harmonization of taxation. Because while more favorable taxation can be adopted more easily by small countries like Ireland, it becomes more complex for large countries which, if they want to adopt it only for limited areas, risk being accused of granting state aid.
Another request would be to increase cooperation agreements with North Africa as much as possible, making Naples and Palermo the cultural outposts of the relationship with the Arab countries, also considering the exchanges that have characterized the two shores over the centuries.
Perhaps by establishing a European Agency to promote such connections and increasing relationships in the fields of training, healthcare and collaboration on large infrastructure projects.
If the idea is to avoid continuing predatory colonization relationships, such an intervention could be not only appropriate but indeed indispensable. And it is certainly easier for such collaborations to be located in border areas rather than in Brussels or Helsinki.
If Europe’s Mediterranean vocation wants to become action and not just outbursts of wind, it is necessary for the Mediterranean to once again become a lake that unites and not a cemetery that divides.
But one request above all must be satisfied; that of clarifying to the Commission that there are two countries in Italy, economically and socially. So many blocks that are legitimate when we talk about France, Spain and today even Germany, must not apply to Italy, still deeply divided into two parts.
And in order not to remain vague and demonstrate the assumption, it is enough to check with adequate clusters how the southern regions, beyond small differences, are collected as regards the majority of indicators, such as unemployment rate, per capita income, exports per capita, tourist presences per square km, km of high speed, number of places in nursery schools per population, and I could continue for many other variables, in the same nucleus.
Just as it would happen for the Center and North. A similar situation does not exist in any other European country. If this principle is accepted, differentiated measures can consequently be adopted, which would be inconceivable for other countries.
Europe has an extreme interest in territorial differences decreasing enough to finance the Pnrr with common debt, but it has this in particular when it concerns a territory which, if it were an independent state, would be the fifth largest in terms of population. After only Germany, France, Spain, Northern Italy and Poland. (pmb)
[Courtesy Il Quotidiano del Sud – L’Altravoce dell’Italia]
