Passera: “Italy with recovery and Draghi at risk for leadership in Europe”

“It is an extraordinary historical moment, despite the great uncertainty that surrounds us. Italy can play very well.” Corrado Passera is trying to clear the field of Italians’ latent pessimism about their country – even if European football and the Olympic Games have been injected with unexpected doses of national pride – especially at this point in the changes in European leadership: “Italy can play a decisive role again, Because of the presence of Mario Draghi at the head of the government. The European Union faces enormous challenges: first of all with regard to ensuring well-being, sustainability and rights, which no other social and economic system has so far been able to do. We must find more advanced balances. “Basera returned – after His experience as Minister of Economic Development and ‘political’ period – as a banker in 2018, he founded and led a publicly listed ‘New Model Bank’ with a capital of nearly 900 million. Now the re-launch of the country, in the post-Covid period, is seen through the eyes of a businessman who had public roles .

“The pandemic has sped up all the processes.” Redevelopment of the entire public spending

“The pandemic has accelerated all the processes already underway for some time. The innovations and changes that can result from new technologies are only the beginning.” The driving force in the focus is the PNRR – in recent days the first EU check for 25 billion was issued – a tool worth 235 billion in five years: “The directions chosen are the right ones, starting with the focus on digital and the energy transition, but I believe that It should be the beginning of a process that includes 850 billion of annual public spending. It is true that most of it is already estimated, but the process of re-prioritization, allocating more resources to prepare for change should begin.’ Thus, in essence, “rethinking the multi-year plan of the country – A kind of zero-budget, as one might say in corporate parlance – to better direct public and private resources to seize new opportunities and take on new risks”, questioning some of the criteria given to earned: “More investments and less rewards. More apprenticeships and less guaranteed income, except in absolute emergencies.”

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Stay away from the “reward logic” and become a magnet for investments from abroad

They are statements of intent that you hear often, and then the logic of politics prevails, and populist measures come to an end… Let’s talk about concrete things.” Let’s talk about. “Tax authorities must structurally reward companies that invest in innovation, that hire, that combine forces, and that strengthen their assets. All sectors can ride innovation, and in many of them Italy is already a leader: from micro-mechanics to machine tools and robotics, from new medicine to biotechnology and genomics, from food to new agriculture. Let us always remember that the most creative and highly serviced content such as tourism is also the most defensible to international competition. Virtuous companies that invest, hire and strengthen should be able to structurally enjoy an IRES close to zero, thus creating an environment that is also attractive to foreign investment. The state will not lose revenue, on the contrary. Other than the bonus! “

European “federal” projects are needed to compete with the giants of the United States and China

However, it is difficult to act alone, in the face of giant multinational corporations, and this highly talented innovation often risks being confined to some small specialized factory … «The question is actually European. We are a global power that does not act that way. There is a dimension of investments, in which only the EU system can specialize with research projects and long-term contracts, to create global champions. I am thinking of the Airbus model, which should be replicated, for example, in the field of semiconductors that is aimed at STM and is already an Italian-French joint venture ». Well, but then when you try to create a transaction group like Fincantieri and the former French Stx, antitrust stops everything: “Competition is good, but in this case also it is clear that even the rules of competition have to adapt to the new playing field. And that too is The reason why European industrial and financial companies have never been in the world rankings, especially in the technological field, is that none of the new giants are European.” In short, the (new) rules and (European) resources? “We need large federal investments, selected, managed and financed at the European level. The EU budget barely exceeds 1% of GDP and dwarfs the resources deployed by the US and China. We are losing precious years, and we risk becoming the target of invasion.”

Now the digital euro. Even in banks, “everything changes.”

For Passera, the crucial step is the adoption of the digital euro (European Central Bank’s Fabio Panetta is working on this project, editor), “which has nothing to do with cryptocurrencies that are not legal tender and never will. We just think that China will launch a digital renminbi on the occasion of Next year’s Winter Olympics: we must get into the order of ideas in which the great powers will compete and also expand their spheres of influence through their digital currencies and the euro lag.” And here we come to the banks, which must face the post-Covid world in a profoundly changing world. “Everything is changing in the bank, especially as a result of new technologies, which is why we created anomalies from scratch. Time and costs for carrying out traditional activities can be reduced by up to 95%, but efficiency is not the most important aspect. Risk management itself is changing. Assessing the bankability of SMEs has often been impossible on the basis of financial data: PSD2-based data analytics and e-invoices are bringing back many businesses that were previously excluded from credit. Just a few years ago it was unimaginable to replace real collateral with data and soon we will be able to talk about programmable assets.”