The participants in this talk-debate noted that by acknowledging the existence of various “Souths” in Italy rather than continuing to speak of “the South”, efforts have been made in recent years to mitigate the persistence of the serious and unresolved question of the South. The underlying hope has been that, by differentiating between the various areas of Italy’s Mezzogiorno, widespread change and gradual renewal might be encouraged to take root. However, far from allaying concerns, statistical data reveals that Italy’s “Souths”, taken as a whole, continue to labor under the longstanding ills that have beset the Mezzogiorno, including a hemorrhaging of human capital, a hypertrophic public sector, a missing market, a lack of meritocracy, inadequate leadership and so on. These problems are exponentially slowing down its growth and increasingly distancing it from the rest of the country, which itself is marked by an ever-deepening rift.
In the context of European cohesion policies, Italy’s South represents one of the most critical areas along with Brandenburg, a federal state within the former East Germany. The convergence between regions sought by the European Union as a necessary adjunct of the single currency is, in effect, being achieved in all member states, albeit at varying speeds. It was noted, however, that the situation in Brandenburg has as its backdrop a political and economic success story: that of the rapid global growth of the former East Germany, which, within a few years, has managed to realign itself with the higher standards of West Germany. Thus, Brandenburg is more properly seen as an exception within the context of a cohesion success story. Italy’s South, however, raises graver concerns.
Indeed, Italy has not yet managed to rehabilitate the South, which continues to suffer from widespread marginalization and a rapid process of isolation. The introduction of fiscal federalism and the anticipated resulting emphasis on a combination of “autonomy” and “responsibility” could be just what the doctor ordered for the South. A more careful assessment of the performance of Southern leaders, who will be able to operate with a greater degree of autonomy, should necessarily entail greater accountability for their performance as assessed, in the final analysis, by citizens. However, the participants stressed that there is no time to lose. The rebirth of the South cannot wait for fiscal federalism to permeate through the regulatory framework and inform, in principle, administrative and governmental action. Urgent solutions are needed in the short term to steer the South through the process of full implementation of fiscal federalism. Paradoxically, these solutions need to be centralist in nature, that is, take the form of either State-imposed obligations and rules, or the milder form of national framework policies which, however, leave room for autonomy on the part of those levels of government closest to the people. It is in any case essential that the ability to plan resources and activities be regained as soon as possible. The story of the FAS fund (the so-called Fund for Underutilized Areas) is perhaps one of the saddest pages in the annals of inefficient planning in the country, the result of which has been a significant loss of development resources.