The present and future of the EU outlined in a newly published book

The European Union has been, and still is, many things: project and ideal, hope and (for some) danger, construction project and challenge. And it is something that even today (maybe more today than in the past) should be protected and defended, also because of its economic significance, as well as cultural and social. Knowing its history and current affairs is of benefit to everyone. In the year of the European elections, Gianluca Passarelli – who teaches Political Science at the Sapienza Università di Roma – adopts a combined historical, cultural and political science approach to narrate its rough path in a new book that has just been published.

Without defence or rhetoric, Stati Uniti d’Europa. Un’epopea a dodici stelle (United States of Europe: a 12-starred epic), analyses not only united Europe’s problems but above all its prospects and the path remaining to be taken to finally achieve the ‘United States of Europe’. And it is precisely the future that Passarelli considers most carefully. The book also analyses the main challenges facing Europe: the economic crisis, inequalities between member states, the shadow of war, the threat of nationalism and populism, the enigma of a foreign and defence policy still too unbalanced between states and exposed to decisions by NATO and the USA. Added to these are the economic tensions between North and South and political tensions between Eurosceptics and those who support closer union.  All these issues are important not only for individual citizens, but also for those who – in the business world – are responsible for their strategies and development.

The vision to strive for, in the author’s view, is that of “a Union united and common above all with regard to democracy, the true strength of its identity”, but also with regard to the business system and the very culture that has to characterise production organisations.

Gianluca Passarelli’s book is a good tool for better understanding of the state of the European Union and, therefore, forming the store of knowledge required to be an informed member of today’s economic and social system.

The opening of the book is admirable: “The greatest institutional, political, social and economic construction of the last 5000 years to be built by humanity on planet Earth: that’s the European Union.”

Stati Uniti d’Europa. Un’epopea a dodici stelle

Gianluca Passarelli

EGEA, 2024

Non-financial communication considered as a useful complement to financial statements

The outlook for many companies – not a new one, but certainly not widespread – is self-presentation not from a financial and economic perspective alone, but also considering its operation in its totality, with a particular focus on people and the sustainability of its activity. It’s a prospect that’s understandable and acceptable, but certainly not easy to achieve, also because good theory alone isn’t enough: it takes a lot of practice, and examples to follow.

Emma Pavanello addresses such examples, important ones, in her research (which became a thesis) defended at the M. Fanno Department of Economics and Management of the University of Padua.

“La comunicazione non finanziaria d’impresa: analisi dei casi aziendali Moncler s.p.a. E Ovs s.p.a.” (non-financial corporate communication: analysis of Moncler S.p.A. and OVS S.p.A.) considers two business case studies from the perspective of non-financial corporate communication meaning and strategies: it’s a way to lend prominence also to the particular production culture in a company.

The research has a simple, effective structure. After setting out the essential features of non-financial communication, Pavanello proceeds to analyse Moncler and OVS. Both are evaluated from the perspective of attention to the atmosphere and to society. In her conclusion, Pavanello then compares the two types of non-financial communication based on the attitude taken to: attention to climate change, animal welfare, waste and recycling, safety and sustainability of materials, occupational health and safety, human rights, inequalities, initiatives for local development, supply chains, communication and more besides.

Emma Pavanello’s research does not contain specific elements of innovation in the area of corporate non-financial communication, but it has the great merit of effectively summarising the topic and analysing it from the perspective of two significant cases of business. In so doing, Pavanello allows us to understand the importance of this tool alongside the more traditional methods of corporate reporting.

La comunicazione non finanziaria d’impresa: analisi dei casi aziendali Moncler s.p.a. E Ovs s.p.a.

Emma Pavanello

Thesis, University of Padua, M. Fanno Department of Economics and Management, Degree in Economics

A futura memoria (for future memory) is the title of an interesting book by Leonardo Sciascia, published by Bompiani in 1989, collecting together series of writings “on certain crimes, on a certain administration of justice and on the Mafia”. Civil, hotly debated, controversial writings, but in any case robustly inspired by the need for truth, and indeed justice, in the face of so many unsolved mysteries in recent Italian history.

That title, a stern admonishment of responsibility not only towards contemporaries but above all towards the coming generations, comes with a clarification, albeit one in brackets: “(if memory has a future)”. It’s a note of concern, prudent caution, a shadow over the very strength of thinking full of civic spirit and sense of responsibility, especially in the face of an Italy that another great man of culture, Pier Paolo Pasolini, had defined this way in his Scritti corsari (corsair writings) in 1975: “We are a country without memory, which is tantamount to saying without history.” With his usual polemical pessimism, he added: “If Italy took care of its history, its memory, it would realise that regimes aren’t born of nothing, but are the result of ancient poisons, of incurable metastases.”

Re-reading those intense words today, “for future memory (if memory has a future)” means attempting to hone cultural (and thus political) tools to tackle the superficiality and contortions of a time when so-called ‘presentism’ seem to prevail in the play of chat and the inclinations of distracted and disoriented public opinion: momentary emotions, the flare of passions of one instant, and mutable opinions.

Skimming over the surface of the news, avoiding every deep thought. Cultivating the superficial obsession with everything that seems new so dear to demagogues and populists, as if the human experience began with an improbable blank slate and not with a strenuous and inevitably painful reconstruction of self, of social relations and of economic relations.

Tradition and innovation hold together and mutually reinforce one another. (This makes it very helpful to devote some time to the episodes of the Rai1 TV series based on History: A Novel by Elsa Morante, one of the best and most important novels of the second half of the 20th century in Italian literature.)

We need to hone the cultural tools of historical knowledge, therefore; of awareness of the weight and depth of economic and social phenomena; of consciousness of how the complexity of our own daily lives can’t be reduced to the banality of the hastiest simplifications, to the rigid framework of likes and emoticons dear to the frenzy of social media. It’s a question of values, of relationships, of a profound sense of our civil society, of our democracy.

Indeed, the goal of working on memory is of great value in designing the future. That’s not only because of the contemporary force of the lesson of great 20th-century French historian Fernand Braudel, that “to have been is a condition for being”. It is also because of the awareness that every development in the knowledge economy of the digital age and unanticipated advances in artificial intelligence require critical thinking, a consistent inclination towards free research, the scientific method and a predisposition towards systematic doubt. They require historical awareness and intellectual curiosity.

In this sense, anniversaries such as Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January are extremely helpful in bringing the tragedy of the Shoah to the attention of us all, revisiting the darkest times of the 20th century by remembering the genocide of Jews through Nazi-Fascist violence (reflecting on the pages of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man, also in schools, is essential) and persisting in seeking a deeper understanding of the differences between that racist extermination and today’s terrible massacres in the Middle East and Ukraine. The same applies to the Italian National Memorial Day of 10 February dedicated to the victims of the foibe, so as never to forget the horror of one of the most terrible episodes of our civil war, committed by the communist Yugoslavian military and their allies among the Italian resistance movement.

The point is that anniversaries aren’t repetitive formalities, but opportunities for study, research and exchange. They are chances to learn about and explore history, spaces for critical work on memory.

The memory of great social ordeals, political conflicts and their solutions, economic progress and commitment from the world of work and business to build prosperity and innovation, scientific advances and great cultural movements, knowing that nothing in human history is linear, nothing without struggle and pain.

Working on memory, precisely in order to respond positively to Sciascia’s doubt as to whether memory has a future, also means insisting on the values of culture. For example, it means treasuring the priceless message given in the speech at the ceremony to inaugurate Pesaro, Italian Capital of Culture 2024, delivered on Saturday by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella: “Culture tolerates no restrictions or boundaries. It demands respect for every citizen’s decisions. It rejects the claim, whether by public power or big corporations, to direct sensibilities towards the monopoly of a single outlook.”

It’s an important message, for our civil society, for the construction of a shared memory achieved through free exchange of different opinions and points of view, to strengthen social ties that today – more than in the past – risk being torn apart because of the sway of individualism and nepotistic, clientelistic and corporate egoism. But they are also points marked for attention when planning in a society where new technologies may lead, if not governed effectively through original dialogue between freedom and responsibility, to unprecedented, traumatic social, generational and cultural divides.

Mattarella insists, recalling that, “if culture means knowledge, creativity, emotion, passion and feeling, then it is the premise of our freedoms, including the freedom to be together,” paying attention to “the plurality of cultures that make our homeland so attractive and our identity inimitable.”

Culture is the value of an open, debating, inclusive society: “Above all, culture is openness also beyond boundaries, without curling up around personal traditions alone. This culture, due precisely to the nature of the historical processes that have characterised Italy’s progressive realisation, comprises relations with neighbouring countries, with other nations, with the aspirations proper to Europeans.”

The Quirinale is a place of historical awareness and focus on memory. This was also confirmed through the lessons of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Giorgio Napolitano – Presidents of the Republic for the preparation and then celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification – in promoting the word patria (homeland), the national flag and the national anthem. The Quirinale is also a place for insisting on everything that holds us together, starting with the Constitution and the values of diversity and cultural and social pluralism.

In such difficult times, President Mattarella’s words on culture also represent valuable support for those who continue to work to preserve memory, on a critical relationship with history, on a desire for change, transformation and innovation – in short, on how to design and build a good ‘future for memory’.

(photo Getty Images)

The life and business of Filiberto Martinetto, from young apprentice to head of a textile group

The book that Filiberto Martinetto (textile businessman) has written is a memoir, and therefore history, but also contains teachings for both the present and the future. His memories aren’t hoarded away in drawers destined to be forgotten, but presented for more or less everyone in densely packed pages, at times almost naive and candid, at other severe, but never banal or false: the story of a business and of an entrepreneur. This volume, entitled Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama (Weaving Life: a dream for the warp, an idea for the weft), has recently gone to press.

It’s a diary-cum-book in some senses, a memoir in others, a manual for good business in still more. The autobiography of a pioneering textile industry businessman unfolds over around 200 pages, but it’s also a business history of the 20th century, the memoir of a determined individual who reconstructs the most notable occasions in his life, weaving work, companies, politics and family together, amid challenges, achievements and losses experienced, personal memories and reflections on what things mean in a changing world.

It all began on 14 November 1934 in the author’s hometown of San Francesco al Campo in the then Province of Turin. From that date, the story unfolds among childhood memories that soon turn into work memories and a great story that unfolds amid wars, periods of peace, the desire to achieve, challenges (many becoming triumphs), family joys, fears shared by all, great sorrows and dreams that Martinetto seeks to turn into reality step by step, succeeding for the most part. He started work as an apprentice textile worker at the age of 13 and never stopped, not even today aged nearly 90. Some of the best names in the national textile industry flow through his story, like Remmert, once the largest ribbon factory in Europe, which was bought and relaunched when it was on the brink of closure and which in a certain sense completes the profile of a group with several factories and locations in Italy and abroad.

But what flows through the book, more than anything else, is the life of a stubborn, visionary entrepreneur, together with that of a local community, which then extends to the big city (Turin, the city of big industry, is just a stone’s throw away) and then to Italy. It’s a story related on certain foundations, like professionalism and commitment, family, and the bond between your colleagues. On closer inspection, these characteristics are shared by thousands of other businessmen, by a business culture that arises every day and has in Martinetto’s pages one of its finest accounts.

Filiberto Martinetto’s book doesn’t claim to be able to teach business, isn’t intended as a manual for shrewd management. Nonetheless it succeeds in both endeavours: it teaches how to do good business by example. It should be read as it was written: simply.

Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama

Filiberto Martinetto

Neos Edizioni, 2023

The origins, characteristics and challenges of corporate museums analysed in a recently published study

Not only museums, but corporate museums, are now widespread, yet perhaps still not enough. And in any case, many still have to come into being. They are tools for telling a story, but also for growing competitiveness and modernity, entities that have already been studied, but which have a potential yet to be discovered and explored. It is around corporate museums that a group of researchers from the University of Insubria

(Daniele Grechi, Anduela Gjoka, Enrica Pavione and Roberta Pezzetti) have been working, specifically considering how to preserve and make best use of the heritage embodied by these structures.

The recently published Musei d’impresa: sfide, opportunità e strategie per la preservazione e valorizzazione del patrimonio industriale e imprenditoriale (Corporate Museums: challenges, opportunities and strategies to preserve and make best use of industrial and business heritage) is a useful analysis of the current situation, implementation and the problems to be addressed in this area.

The research starts by comparing traditional museums and corporate museums, then proceeds to examine the specific functions and goals of business museums, then the reality of corporate museums in Italy (starting, after some historic examples, from the foundation of the Museimpresa association). Absolutely exhaustive detail of the geography of these realities all over the country is then provided, needed to address the management models according to which the museums are designed and run. The research is completed by a series of case studies from the furniture sector, Kartell, Molteni Group and Poltrona Frau.

The snapshot that the authors take from their analysis offers several aspects for observation. They stress: “Each museum represents a unique situation, since they have an exclusive corporate story to tell. Consequently, they play multiple roles, from celebrating business- and family-related events to providing communication services and corporate training and contributing to the promotion of corporate social and cultural responsibility.” But they add that “corporate museums also drive research, conservation and transmission of companies’ tangible and intangible heritage,” without forgetting that they “contribute to promoting corporate identity and links between business, territory and stakeholders, transforming the industrial past into cultural, identity and educational resources for the local community and the wider public.” And they address all this without neglecting the “financial, managerial and technological challenges, which require innovative approaches for their long-term sustainability”.

Grechi, Gjoka, Pavione and Pezzetti’s research has the great merit of clearly summarising, in a limited number of pages, an evolving issue that requires good understanding in order to avoid misinterpretations that risk distorting its meaning.

Musei d’impresa: sfide, opportunità e strategie per la preservazione e valorizzazione del patrimonio industriale e imprenditoriale

Daniele Grechi, Anduela Gjoka, Enrica Pavione, Roberta Pezzetti

Economia Azienda Online, vol. 14, n. 4, 2023

“Rebuilding trust”, is the watchword launched by the World Economic Forum, the conference of 2,800 leading players in the global economy that has assembled, as it does every year, in Davos among the snow-capped mountains of Switzerland. That means the trust of businesses, consumers, financial markets and institutions, to avert the risks of a major weakening of world economies.

How? First of all, by attempting to build credible, long-term responses to the many hotbeds of crisis around the world (Ukraine, the Middle East, the Pacific area) and their economic consequences (the partial blockade of the Red Sea, due to the conflict triggered by Yemeni Houthi Islamists, could lead to a major slowdown in European industry and recession).

Reassuring international policy prospects are therefore needed, even if at the moment authoritative and far-sighted actors who are capable of building widely acceptable diplomatic solutions remain to be seen. But precisely in the name of trust, it is also necessary to reflect on political choices able to provide concrete answers not only to faltering economic growth (the recession in Germany, the EU’s main economic player, heavily involves other European countries, starting with Italy), but also to the widespread social malaise stemming from increasing divides and inequalities (social, indeed, but also territorial, between the Global North and South, gender and generation, economic and cultural conditions, knowledge and access to primary goods, like health and education).

Dramatic and growing divides (the Oxfam Report released in Davos reveals that the five richest men in the world have more than doubled their fortunes since 2020, from $405 to 869 billion, while the condition of the five billion poorest people is unchanged). These divides are increasingly unacceptable. They profoundly weaken the future prospects for the coming generations and radically undermine not only the economic order, but also the political stability of several countries and, from the USA to Europe, the very resilience of our democracies (against the perverse drive of populism, sovereignism, and exclusionary localism).

The issue of trust, in the future, in institutions, in political and trade union representation and in the authoritative planning of intellectual elites also affects Italy deeply. And for some time now, in the mainstream media itself, the topic has been consistently brought to the attention of a public sensitive to increasing general and personal fragilities and imbalances in daily life and future opportunities. A breach of trust, in fact.

Here are some figures, to flesh out “the winter of our discontent”, a context of growing concern. Bank of Italy (Il Sole24Ore, 9 January) figures indicate that the wealthiest 5% of Italian households have 46% of the total net wealth (wealth as the sum of all the household’s property and financial assets, net of debt). The poorest half of the country has just 7.6%, largely tied to the ownership of the family’s first home: a significant asset, of course, but of little use in facing increasing life needs and essential expenses and investments (health, educating the coming generation). In short: despite owning the house they live in, the middle class is getting poorer and their children risk still more deterioration.

It’s true that wealth inequality in Italy is less pronounced than in other countries, such as Germany or the USA (Italy rose from 0.67 to 0.7 on the Gini Index, which measures wealth distribution on a scale of 0 to 1). But whereas in Germany and France, to consider another figure, wages have grown by 33% in the last 20 years, together with productivity, here they have essentially remained static (+0.36%, to be exact). Measures to lower the tax wedge, which must become structural, and linking wage growth to productivity growth are paths that must be pursued decisively.

A few more figures, for reflection: ISTAT has recorded that there are 1.3 million contracts below the minimum wage threshold (jobs at an hourly rate of less than €7.79, a genuine “working poor”, with a negative impact on fixed-term workers, the under-30s, women and apprentices; la Repubblica, 11 January). The Inclusion Allowance, which has replaced the controversial Citizens’ Income, reaches only 450,000 families. Conditions of poverty (average monthly income of below €640) also affect 2.18 million households, 8.3% of the total (it was 7.7% in 2021) or, to look at it another way, 5.6 million people (9.7% of Italians, an increase from the 9.1% of previous years).

“One in six Italians is going hungry,” summarises Chiara Saraceno in La Stampa (11 January), analysing household spending in discount supermarkets and documenting the substantial cuts in food quantity and quality, with health repercussions, including for children (junk food supports the spread of obesity). Again, La Stampa (15 January) reports that “one Italian in six is poorer” in terms of “medicines and waiting lists”. According to the Asvis Report on territories for 2023, “inequality is increasing in Italy: growing poverty, worsening environmental risks, decreasing graduate numbers” (la Repubblica, 13 December 2023).

Major political choices are therefore required to tackle the crisis and rebuild trust, as we were saying, not only from the perspective of emergency, but above all to lend Italy prospects in a European context. They are also required to finally set in motion a social mobility elevator that has been stalled for 30 years, restoring prospects for young people of both sexes and preventing them from feeling increasingly compelled to leave Italy and seek better job and life prospects elsewhere.

Reform policies are needed, for tax first and foremost (it is intolerable that 42% of Italians pay personal income tax for all, with wide areas of tax evasion, especially among the self-employed, as documented by Ferruccio de Bortoli in Corriere della Sera, 15 January). Then there’s the labour market to reform; training, improving quality and diffusion of knowledge; and industrial development. The resources of the PNRR, which should be spent soon and well, are an indispensable lever, as is the judicious use of other EU funds.

This is the pivotal point: policies that favour business and not profit from position, stimulate innovation, productivity and competitiveness, and enable Italy to keep playing its role as the second largest manufacturer in the EU, after Germany. We should remember that it is precisely manufacturing (we wrote about this in last week’s blog) that has been the main force behind our economic growth in recent years, thanks to the strength of its exports. In short: industrial policy and not clientelistic protection of corporations.

Our outlook must remain European, with Europe’s values of sustainable development and social inclusion, and we should reassess the cultural and moral heritage of a continent that has succeeded in maintaining a combination of liberal democracy, the market and welfare. It’s a heritage to which we have long been accustomed, but one that the friction of new historical processes and the growth in inequality that we have discussed is undermining.

So we need to rebuild trust, without resigning ourselves to decline.

(Photo Getty Images)

The theoretical and practical principles of a different vision of business management are summarised in a book that has just been published

Frugal management isn’t necessarily threadbare, but essential, on its guard against redundancy, excess or being over the top. Frugality is a new frontier in business management that must be understood and then applied with care. Above all, it also provides an opportunity to expand on the concept and applications of the sustainable economy viewed so favourably today.

Frugal management. Valore sostenibile per le generazioni future (Frugal Management: sustainable value for future generations) is therefore required reading. It was written by Alessandro Martemucci, who starts from an observation: the current management model is unsustainable; it has created rigid organisations, slow to adapt to change and incapable of transmitting innovation and well-being to the context in which they operate. Now, at such a troubled time for economic and social systems (not to mention environmental risks), the author maintains that a new approach is needed, involving precisely a new path for management, which combines efficiency and solidarity, material and relational assets, economic capital and social capital.

The book takes on the subject starting from an initial snapshot of an “increasingly uncertain” management then begins to approach the idea of frugal management, starting from the Benedictine economy, then from that of St Francis to arrive at the present day. Four dimensions of frugal management (economic, digital, social and environmental) are then identified to arrive at a definition of the model to be implemented and better understood through some “practical cases”.

As is often the case with original books, Martemucci’s book can also be controversial (and complete agreement with the contents isn’t a requirement): but this is precisely its most important contribution.

Frugal management. Valore sostenibile per le generazioni future

Alessandro Martemucci

Guerini Next, 2023

The Grand Tour of the USA of the 1920s behind many innovations in the Ivrea-based company

Business and organisation of the factory as an uninterrupted flow of material and immaterial relationships and transitions. Business as community. These concepts were dear to Adriano Olivetti, ideas recalled and reaffirmed many times and on many occasions. It is also a worthwhile endeavour to read the contribution of Sabrina Fava (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) on “Adriano Olivetti. Un approccio pedagogico al lavoro” (Adriano Olivetti: a pedagogical approach to work) which recently appeared in Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica – Journal of Theories and Research in Education to better understand these aspirations.

The author investigates one of the particular aspects of Olivetti’s human and entrepreneurial venture: his ‘educational trip’ to the United States in 1925 and its links with some of the initiatives that would later characterise the entrepreneur’s activities.

Fava relates that Olivetti began to consider strategic company organisation and human resource training choices precisely during his Grand Tour of the United States, when he analysed American production systems in search of effective solutions to overcome workers’ alienation in labour by rethinking the Taylorist production system and overturning the cliche that profit must come first.

Those months gave rise to the impulse to consider the scientific organisation of work according to Adriano, vocational training through the opening of the Mechanics Training Centre and senior management training that would give rise to the IPSOA postgraduate institute of business administration in the 1950s. Sabrina Fava considers these all structural initiatives able to offer a different perspective on the aim of business: not profit as the sole priority, but other things as well.

Fava’s analysis therefore proceeds to trace the making of young Adriano’s impressions and their subsequent transfer to the Ivrea-based company through Olivetti’s letters to family members and other written evidence. Sabrina Fava provides a clear, helpful summary to understand more about Olivetti’s business culture, still imitated and followed today.

Adriano Olivetti. Un approccio pedagogico al lavoro

Sabrina Fava (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore)

Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica – Journal of Theories and Research in Education 18, 3 (2023)

Is this an Epiphany of crisis or of a new start? In this new year, so full of uncertainties, will we still be walking in the winter of our discontent or will we have the chance to work towards a more robust recovery? We ended 2023 reading documented analysis from Censis on “Italians afraid and inert like sleepwalkers” and began 2024 with the survey by Nando Pagnoncelli of Ipsos (Corriere della Sera, 2 January) on an increase in “areas that concern Italians”: work and the economy, first and foremost, but also healthcare and the resurgence of Covid 19, the “resilience of purchasing power” and “the functioning of institutions and the political situation” (the issues of immigration slipped to fifth place, security to seventh). We know about “a country on hold that’s low on hope”, according to a Coop Report (la Repubblica, 6 January) that speaks of uncertain consumers, lacking confidence about change and therefore inclined to rein in consumption and try to save instead. And we read analysis with worries for the future almost everywhere, amid ongoing wars from Ukraine to the Middle East and major environmental, economic and social imbalances, tensions linked to the high number of elections (in 2024 there will be votes in 76 countries, from India to Brazil, China and Russia, in Europe for the EU Parliament and in the US for the presidential election).

At such a controversial and difficult time, Italy holds the presidency of the G7, and it can and must play a fundamental role in attempting to smooth out international tensions but also the evolution of institutions and alliances out of the traps of sovereignism and manoeuvring against western democracies and values (“What if the United States of Europe were the real protagonist of the century?”, Carlo Carboni rightly asks, as a favourable mantra, in Il Sole24Ore).

So what’s the atmosphere in the country? In short, we’re witnessing a “race on a knife edge for a 2024 caught between geopolitical crises and the spectres of recession” (Il Sole24Ore, 18 December 2023).

How is it to be navigated, in that case? The goal is to seek a good understanding of the world around us, avoiding that dramatisation of phenomena that it is so dear to agitated habitual social media users (above all those who exploit the same media and spread fake news to disrupt public opinion) and instead insisting on hard facts rather than factoids, data and analysis from authoritative research centres. We also need to work to re-establish a reasonable climate of trust, essential to stimulate investment and consumption.

This trust also depends a great deal on the responsible choices made by key figures in both politics and society.

Data and facts, therefore.

Istat confirms 0.7% growth for Italy in 2023, a three-point improvement on last year’s forecasts, still weak but in any case above the EU average and far from the recession that hit Germany (and created problems for many of the Italian companies that are qualified suppliers of major German industry, starting with the automotive industry). And the forecasts for 2024 aren’t great news either, with GDP still “zero point x”: “Little growth and little investment: Italy more fragile and unequal,” summarises Mario Deaglio (La Stampa, December 6, 2023), also recalling that “emigration has started again: over twenty years, 800,000 Italians have left”, looking elsewhere, in Europe and around the world, for better living and working conditions.

But, alongside weak growth, there is other data to read: on inflation, for example, that is slowing in both the US and the eurozone, on the rates ceasing to race upwards and that may lower, and on an economy slowly, painstakingly, starting to move again. The limits imposed by the slowdown in world trade due to exacerbated geopolitical tensions after Ukraine and the Middle East remain (boat attacks from Houthi Islamic extremists on ships crossing the Red Sea are seriously complicating crossings from the Far East to the Mediterranean, along the Suez Canal, generating an explosion in sea freight prices and therefore transport costs). Tensions in the Pacific around Taiwan are not easing either.

But there are also positive signs together with the tensions and fears. The reorganisation of globalisation and the redesign of supply chains with the related phenomena of back shoring, that is, the creation of “short supply chains” and favour towards local-for-local investments (produced as close as possible to the target markets) are reviving many economies and pushing political decision makers, starting with EU policymakers, to consider common European investments in energy, the supply of strategic raw materials and the manufacture of semi-finished products essential to industry, such as microchips.

It’s a changing world, a world in motion.

The stock markets appreciate these changes and, while affected by the risks of crisis and repercussions on economies, they see their figures rising. The Milan Stock Exchange recorded an increase of 28%, with a list now worth more than 760 billion euros (Corriere della Sera, 30 December).

Certainly, as far as Italy is concerned, it is worth focusing on the positive trend in exports, which may exceed the record of 2023, arriving at 660 billion euros, according to Sace forecasts, an increase of 6.8%.

The manufacturing trade balance surplus will exceed 100 billion, making a major contribution to our balance of payments performance. Italy, in short, is “third in surplus in two thirds of world trade”, after China and Germany, in strategic sectors involving navigation, machine tools, packaging machinery, heating equipment, tiles and sector machinery, pumps for liquids and a long series of furnishing and agri-food products, etc. (Marco Fortis in Il Sole24Ore, 21 December 2023).

These are clearly positive figures, to the extent that respectable journalists have spoken of “a great (or almost great) year” (Claudio Cerasa in Il Foglio, 15 December), bringing together data on GDP, inflation and exports.

Indeed, that’s a point to focus on: exports and their fundamental role in manufacturing.

Italy has not gone into recession, despite all its limitations (starting with productivity, stagnant for over twenty years, in part due to the indifferent function of the machinery of public life) thanks to the positive contribution of the manufacturing industry, foreign tourism and the dynamics of construction stimulated by the “superbonus” (which, however, has unfortunately led to very serious distortions in the markets and especially trends in public finances).

But “the two strengths of industrial exports and tourism are no longer enough, and nor will the next drop in rates and the flexibility granted by the new European Stability Pact. The challenge to overcome is that of productivity” (Oscar Giannino in “Affari&Finanza”, la Repubblica, December). Gianmatteo Manghi, CEO of Cisco, confirms: “Italy is a country of excellence, but it lags behind in productivity. And it is necessary to link the digital transition to the green transition” (Corriere della Sera, 28 December 2023).

Talking about productivity, also linking its growth to improved wages, means committing to radical and courageous reforms of the public administration (bureaucracy, taxation, contracting, justice, job market, training, health, etc.) but also to an industrial policy that aims to strengthen the world of the manufacturing industry and related services during the twin digital and green transition. It means facilitating competition and a market culture (the complete opposite of protecting electorally significant lobbies like beach facilities, taxi drivers, street traders, holders of various types of income, often verging on social parasitism). It means insisting on modernising our production infrastructure according to the values of the ‘knowledge economy’.

It means, for example, reinstating the tax incentives for ‘Industry 4.0’ and expanding them to ‘Industry 5.0’ and to the spread of artificial intelligence (in government circles, 2024 is said to be the right year). It means loosening the knots of crises and transitions in strategic sectors, like steel and automotive, starting from the effective investment of Stellantis in Italy.

All this has a name: industrial policy, both Italian and European.

Investments in innovation, research, patents, human capital and training (so in immigration management policy as well). Investments in quality, safety and environmental and social sustainability, considered as genuinely competitive assets. Investments in the capitalisation of companies and reinforcement of industrial supply chains, looking at international markets. Infrastructure investments both material and intangible, in logistics, to promote knowledge (and therefore in correct spending of PNRR resources).

There is scant evidence of all this in public discourse, government measures included (“Meloni’s great removal” the headline in Il Foglio, 6 January), as though privilege and support for microeconomic categories and corporations, also through bonuses, can guarantee robust GDP growth and the elimination of social imbalance.

Instead, it is necessary to acknowledge that the future of the Italian economy has a modern and competitive manufacturing industry as its backbone, around which most of the rest of the national economy should revolve, including corporate finance and high-tech services. All the data we have examined says so, starting with the fundamental lever of exports.

A far-sighted industrial breakthrough is needed.

Milan means the thousand lights of Christmas, in Montenapoleone and in the crowded streets of the fashion and shopping district. Milan means the long line of men and women entering the Caritas Ambrosian Refectory in the square of the Greco district, passing under the portal sculpted by Mimmo Paladino, the cross, the loaves, the fish, the symbols of hospitality.

Milan, luxury. Milan, poverty. And in between, hundreds of thousands of people every day in the restless metropolis who build what’s needed for a better common destiny: work, business, knowledge, social relationships, support, the essential structures of the values that make up a community. A civitas and no longer just an urbs of streets and squares, grand buildings and shops, a group of people, not a crowd of them, people who deserve attention, consideration, and respect.

There’s “a social malaise that puts the Milan model in crisis”, writes Aldo Bonomi accurately in Il Sole24Ore (19 December), noting how post-Expo dynamism is running out and how “the premium city” of the so-called “first circle”, the city centre, doesn’t “trickle” further down, ceasing to generate cohesion and widespread opportunity and instead leading to new poverties, more accentuated inequalities.

Tourism, real estate investment, events: they produce wealth, it’s true. But concern is growing about the cracks, now conspicuous, of a system that has always characterised Milan’s innermost nature: the ability to constructs original syntheses of economic growth and the civil virtues of solidarity, competitiveness and social inclusion.

Of course, those who portray Milan as “the winter of our discontent” are wrong, those who exacerbate the tangle of social problems (starting with security, be it real or merely perceived), forgetting the characteristics of fragility and complexity typical of every metropolis. Those who rely on the “Quality of Life Ranking” (Il Sole24Ore, 4 December) for consolation are equally wrong. Again this year, this sees Milan among the top ten provinces (the first is Udine, followed by Bologna and Trento), especially thanks to the indicators connected with the dynamics of the economy and business. But of course, in this complexity of contrasts, it is necessary to locate a meaning, a direction, a vocation: to acknowledge that current opinion no longer considers Milan “the place to be”, as The New York Times proclaimed a few years ago, but not a city to be challenged, harshly criticised, or condemned either.

It’s been under discussion for some time now. And perhaps precisely this capacity for critical analysis and self-criticism is one of the vital stimuli for rethinking Milan, setting aside the idea of a “model” (lived as the arrogant claim to primacy of a city that ends up being envied and detested) and thinking instead of sustainable development, hospitality, the process of social mobility and opportunity. Less hasty and overpowering communication, more culture. Less propagandistic storytelling and more political imagination to attempt to build, also through good metropolitan governance, a new and fairer economic and social balance.

On the other hand, Milan’s ability to face its history and current situation with severity is a widespread attitude. It’s the opinion of Piero Borghini, mayor for too short a time in the political and institutional storm of the early 1990s (the time of Mani pulite affair) and then, in any case, an intellect that has always been clear-sighted and lively: “There’s no city in the world that studies itself the same way as Milan. Rome gets photographed because it’s beautiful. Milan doesn’t get photographed but studied. The books on the economy of Milan, the research… there’s an intellectual class that studies, and that makes proposals. It would be enough to read them, those books…” (Il Foglio, 14 December). Because “Milan is going through a phase of reflection, but it’s not a lost city. At the most, the politics are lost.”

What’s needed is not to stop at the late-19th-century myth of “moral capital” built “on the spirit of entrepreneurship, work ethic and good governance” and to think, if anything, about how to combine the knowledge economy with environmentalism and productivity.

These are challenging issues, which are increasingly echoed in public debate (including the meetings of the Centro Studi Grande Milano, chaired by Daniela Mainini: how to avoid, as you walk along the ridge, plunging into crisis rather than taking the paths, albeit demanding, down to recovery?). They must also be explored and directed towards political and social responses, with that “courage” and that exercise of “trust” that the Archbishop of Milan, Monsignor Mario Delpini, indicated as necessary virtues in his speech to the city in Sant’Ambrogio, asking politicians and citizens to “start again from young people, demography, immigrants”. Development, hospitality and integration, in fact. Certainly not just the lights….

So discussion, free of prejudice, making good use of the tools of knowledge and dialectics, steering clear of the hasty simplifications of propaganda and keeping the lesson of great Milanese native Umberto Eco in mind: “Freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.”

One can rightly attempt to value the past, as seen in the idea (dear to finance expert Francesco Micheli, a sophisticated, cultured man) of proposing the historic centre of Milan as UNESCO heritage, lending due recognition to that whole of monumental and cultural treasures ranging from the Duomo to La Scala, from Brera and the Palazzo Reale to the Poldi Pezzoli, the Gallerie d’Italia, the Museo del Novecento and the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana with drawings from the Codex Atlanticus by Leonardo da Vinci.

It is also possible to insist on linking urban planning projects in Sesto San Giovanni and Lambrate, in the former railway stations of Porta Genova, Scalo Farini and Porta Romana and in the former Expo area to social housing commitments and services of value to the public as well (the Comune is already moving in this direction). And above all, it is worth considering the political and administrative choices and responsibilities of social actors, starting with companies, that can make Milan a smart city, of knowledge and innovation, a metropolis of processes that, between Europe and the Mediterranean, connects people, ideas, business, research and relationships, involving the whole rich fabric of intermediate cities: from Turin to Genoa (along the lines of the GeMiTo project promoted by Unione Industriali in Turin, Assolombarda and Confindustria in Genoa), from Bergamo to Brescia and the North East, from the Como–Varese route to Emilia. An area of companies, universities and communities committed to combining innovation and inclusion, wealth creation and the spread of well-being: liberal democracy and social market economy, in short, with a European outlook.

We therefore need decisions that promote entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as knowledge and skills, to support everything that develops and spreads new environmentally and socially sustainable technologies.

If this is the outlook, Milan must once more start learning how to maintain a connection in the new generations, how to enact hospitality and inclusion, in short, how once more to become able to make everyone who comes here from the rest of Italy, from Europe, from the great basin of the Mediterranean, including the coasts of Africa, “become Milanese”.

It’s a grand project, built, to quote Bonomi once again, on “civic virtues and social passion”, a far-sighted strategy of intelligent politics and effective public administration, with respect to the urban management and services of “greater Milan”: the good governance of transformation.