Editorial by Roberto Napoletano L’OTRAVOCE dell’ITALIA AGRICOLTURA, THE MONEY IS THERE BUT THE MINISTER IS SLEEPING

The South, for geographical, geopolitical and economic reasons, is not only the great opportunity for Italian growth, but the gateway to Europe in the Mediterranean and the continent of the future. This opportunity is taken advantage of with a central structure and an up-to-date boss who makes everyone turn around and implements PNRR investments based on human capital, not multiplying events and relying on multipurpose people who know everything and, therefore, nothing. Just as it is no longer acceptable that the Ministry of Agriculture directed by Patuanelli, exponent of that grillina wing that complains about budget deviations every day, has not spent, but not committed, one euro of the 1.3 billion allocated by the Complementary Fund for them to be redistributed until the end of last year precisely to the agri-food chains that suffer most from the sting of the raw materials war

HISTORY fights for the South. The pandemic tells us to shorten production chains and make investments in the southern territories to ensure the safety of raw materials and quality labor. The ugly war in the heart of Europe is the gas war, the old energy of hydrocarbons and the new one of renewable and wind energy, but it is also the war of cereals and wheat, the basis of the chain of our explorations and of Made in agri-food Italy.

Thus, the message that comes out even stronger and clearer is that the South, even if only for geographic reasons and sun exposure, is not only the great opportunity for Italian economic growth, but the gateway to Europe in the Mediterranean and on the mainland. . It is at the heart of the new European business order and global geopolitics.

We have an extraordinary tool to make the most of this strategic opportunity. It is called the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. It represents the test of a European fund for common investments (Next Generation Eu) which will have to be repeated for at least ten years (the second will have to concern energy), but which will have a future or not if Italy and its southern countries will prove the height of the challenge. We live dramatically in electoral times where citizen consensus is sought in secondary matters rather than working to solve the real problems we face. We must demonstrate on the ground that we are capable of using European money as a multiplier of the value of our logistics, of the maritime industry, of a new form of energy supply in the South of the world, sharing the risk of dependence, of expanding the industrial base, -food, tourism and culture of the two Italys united by a European strategy forced to compete with a new economic, geopolitical and cultural epoch.

The double whammy, pandemic-war, has led to an increase in the cost of energy that will remain. It’s all a difficult thing to manage as well because you can’t increase the public debt too much, as the ECB will soon stop buying our government bonds to continue to finance our deficit spending, first having to take down the inflation monster. The way forward is difficult for Italy as well because if we operate with an excessive deficit, making new displacements and new debts, we run the risk of rolling downstream even before the real economy implodes due to market risk.

The sacrosanct appeal of the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, to the political forces of the coalition to recover what has been done and continue on the path of reforms, of facts and not of gossip, requires a qualitative political leap in order not to waste the goods of the historic opportunity that Europe has offered us. This is the bottom line, not decisions within this or that majority for this or that presumptive rule of electoral favor.

What is no longer acceptable today is that the Ministry of Agriculture led by Patuanelli, exponent of that grillina wing that daily complains about budget variations, has not spent or committed one euro of the 1.3 billion allocated by the Fund. were redistributed at the end of last year precisely to the agri-food chains that suffer the most from the sting of the war on raw materials and our double dependence on the aggressor State, in terms of energy, and on the attacked State, in terms of agro-food.

These ethical shames, even more than economic ones, are no longer tolerable, just as we must also stop pretending to always cash in the General Accounting of the State when we cannot even spend what is politically attributed to your department for exploiting the European anchorage.

Just as it is not possible to continue thinking about implementing the NRRR for the South by multiplying the number of conferences, counting, however, with all the specialists in everything from De Molli, understood as Valerio, and in the decadent The European House – Ambrosetti who, thanks to De Molli, has nothing more than the value of its esteemed founders. We won’t go far if we don’t first understand that only a central planning and execution structure led by men of vision and operational capacity, with the same character and the same intelligent determination of the Fisherman of the first Cassa, that of the Italian miracle economy, can make it possible to take advantage of the strategic opportunity that comes from the history of a geopolitical epoch, the daughter of an inevitable new world order and an unrepeatable European historic opportunity. Otherwise, a lot will inevitably be announced, something will be done anyway, but certainly the priority investment, which is that of the human capital on which the unity of the country will be rebuilt, will only suffer, causing the whole house of cards to fall because there is no one who helps to do good things.

There is no need for footbridges of people foreign to the business culture of the real economy of the South and Mezzogiorno of the world and far from the knowledge of the real problems of the Italian territorial gaps that affect the North and the South, but also the South of the North. It is necessary to work actively to privilege, as the Draghi government deservedly did, investment in schools and research from early childhood education banks, but also for the emergence of initiative and the ability to create a system in the South and its private economies. territorial in terms of internal growth and attraction of international productive and financial capital. Which are, together, the only concrete possibility of a historically possible future.

The rest is gossip, gossip, gossip. On which Draghi would do well to make the weight of his pragmatic force felt, which European history has recognized for him, which is what makes it possible to multiply the value of others, and that, above all, today more than ever his country has a vital need .