The Procurement Code is an extremely important body of legislation for today’s Italy, especially in light of the efforts required of the country by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). The code’s reform, outlined in law no. 78/2022, contains some significant additions, the first and most prominent of which concerns the role of the State Council directly charged with drafting the text, and not only as a mere panel of experts.
Educational curricula are traditionally designed to train young people for the world of work. In that sense, education plays a fundamental role in determining new generations’ possibilities for future success. Thus, it is particularly important in this changing world that educational systems keep pace with the transformations taking place in the society, technology and careers. Given the rapidity of those transformations, it the educational experience can no longer be considered as having ended once one has joined the workforce – hence the need for lifelong learning. As much as it should not be surprising that many investment funds have recently identified training as a high profitability sector, it’s excessive financing must nevertheless be avoided in order to maintain stability and quality over time.
There is broad consensus in both Europe and China that global economic slowdown is a serious threat, which is complicated by current monetary policy responses to inflation as a result of both the Russia/Ukraine war and the end of the pandemic recession. Given the enormous challenges this poses for economic policies, a multilateral framework for managing problems of such proportions would be to the advantage all countries – advanced, emerging and developing. In reality, however, many of the most recent national choices have gone in the opposite direction, with scarce coordination and unilateral action – starting with the US Fed, whose interest rate adjustments have been especially impactful given the international role of the dollar.
The battle of Pavia on February 24, 1525 was a revolutionary event, and the first major European battle in terms of army composition and geopolitical scale of operations and objectives. Moreover, it was a battle in which a new technology – the firearm – was employed for the first time in campaign and in which the populace was pitted against the nobility. Today’s war in Ukraine, like the battle of Pavia at the time, has opened up some new perspectives: political ones, i.e., the debate it has triggered on European defense, as well as technological ones on the future of security.
After two years of planning, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) has reached the point of implementation, with distributions going to local agencies that are now tasked with administering the funds. This undertaking is not devoid of problems associated with technical and administrative capacities. While on the one hand Italy is among the countries leading the definition of objectives and requesting installments from Europe, at the same time it is saddled with the age-old difficulty getting projects off the ground; indeed, according to a government update, only 15 billion of the 39 billion allotted has been spent.
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The changes underway in the automotive sector today are almost unique to that industry, in that they originate externally.
The war in Ukraine represents a major point of discontinuity in prospects for a future international power balance teetering between the order ensured by a system of shared rules and a scenario of disorder marked by a tense democracy/autocracy standoff.
We are living in times of crisis and discontinuity, the former of which has a beginning and an end while the latter endures, leaving its indelible mark. In the words of Pope Francis, ours is not an era of change but a change of era.
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Large-scale events are undoubtedly an opportunity to plan medium to long-term infrastructure investments. Similarly, the PNRR can be viewed as a sort of large-scale event ready to reap the benefits of Italy’s experience hosting past events, with keen attention to both positive and negative results.
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The war Russia has unleashed on Ukraine is having a global effect, especially in the energy sector and on the economy more generally, in what was already a considerably unstable global environment. Despite the fragmentation or regionalization of some phenomena now underway, globalization continues to be a fundamental reality for today’s world, in terms both of trade interdependence and, even more critically, of financial connections – sectors where the West clearly remains predominant.
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Although far from the levels of other advanced economies, Italy’s start-up ecosystem has made considerable strides over recent years. Italy now has an opportunity to press forward and to make up for delays in the generation of innovative enterprises.
Data governance and the harvesting and processing of information are important strategic processes with far-reaching consequences, impacting everything from business models to geopolitical balances.
Over recent years, new technological instruments have accelerated the digitalization of finance, radically changing the user experience and shaking the historic foundations of sector institutions. From the exponential growth of FinTech to the advent of digital currencies to the new frontier of the metaverse, the transformations have been far-reaching.
