National Interest

Form and beauty, joy and endurance in the face of suffering, a sense of what’s real, a dislike for certain forms of rhetoric, a dissociation from abstraction and the rejection of a “psychological tradition”: these are some of the distinctive traits that over the centuries have contributed to shaping the Italian identity. To be clear, we are talking of the identity that fascinated both well-known and unknown figures of the European fashionable set and led them – almost overwhelmed by some kind of categorical imperative – to undertake the celebrated “Journey through Italy”.

It is by now an increasingly widespread view that the implementation of the new framework of financial relations between the State and local administrations foreshadowed by the constitutional reform of 2001 represents an unavoidable priority in the political agenda of the coming months.In the current economic and financial climate, the task of finally giving substance to fiscal federalism in Italy is an opportunity not to be missed if we are to embark on a new and more modern approach to public administration and policies by bringing citizens into closer contact with the authorities respons

Without denying the status of banks as fully-fledged businesses yet reaffirming their intrinsic difference to any other type of entrepreneurial undertaking, participants at this roundtable discussion called for banks to go back to conducting “traditional” banking activities.

By the year 2030, worldwide energy consumption, spurred by economic development in such highly populated countries as China and India, might well be 50% greater than today’s levels. Fossil fuels will continue to play a key role and hydrocarbons will be called upon to satisfy more than half the world’s demand for energy. The concentration of oil and natural gas reserves in areas of the planet that suffer from political instability complicates the scenario. Many important questions remain on the sustainability front as far as energy supply is concerned.

Italy’s energy system is marked by a production mixture heavily tilted in the direction of the more expensive energy sources, oil and gas, and – almost without exception – by its dependence on fuel imports. It is therefore incapable of supporting the country’s development. In comparison to its European neighbors, Italy is paying for years of delay in the development of infrastructures, to the point where today it is paying an extremely high energy bill, with serious damage to the competitiveness of our businesses.

The main cause behind Italy’s blocked growth is the Italians’ approach to asset management: they tend to hold tight to their patrimony and not help wealth circulate. How to overcome this obstacle? A bipartisan approach would help, but it might not be enough. Today, after all, both protectionist and liberal tendencies coexist – concentrating solely on opening up markets seems to be a thing of the past, yet pure protectionism would only make changing the system more difficult.

In Italy, the dynamic development of the public regulatory authorities which took place throughout the 1990s was at times chaotic and unmanageable. It was unquestionably marked by haphazard rules, unsuitable for guaranteeing real independence, accountability and transparency. During the last two legislatures, lawmakers conducted studies and drew up regulation to reform the public regulatory authorities. On February 2, the Council of Ministers approved a bill on market regulation and supervision and the rules and powers of the public regulatory authorities.

The Italian language, with its rich traditions, history and culture, today finds itself squashed between the onslaught of English on the one hand and the persistence of dialects on the other. It risks being reduced to a language employed faithfully only in bureaucratic circles. Though disaster is not yet in sight, it would behoove us to confront the issue sooner rather than later, in political debate and in universities, especially as youth are particularly prone to linguistic degradation.

The debate focused on the ideal approach for providing Italy’s managers with a training process that encourages personal maturity, pushing students to abandon an enduring adolescent phase. In an era of exponential fragmentation of knowledge, the leaders of the future will need new methodologies for understanding, and a solid sense of the necessity of continuing education. First, we need to recover the virtuous cycle of training-transmission-training and make the principle of “returning to school” part of our mindset.

The forum “Italy’s patrimony: value added in global competition” was part of the Institute’s National Interest project, which has posted a rich selection of documents in Italian and in English on this website in an ongoing discussion of the value of identity, culture, language and skills in this country. In order to better meet the challenges posed by current globalization trends, the forum highlighted the need for Italy to bet on its rich heritage. The Italian language, in particular, has a long and important history, and represent many of the roots of Western civilization.