Rebalancing Europe
Times change.
Once I went to the conferences organized by the ID group (at the time EFD ), causing great scandal among my "left-wing" economist colleagues: "But those are fascists! They are Nazis! …" (as you well remember: I give up for charity of patria to link to the related blog articles).
Now I organize them, and I invite free and open-minded economists, who do not necessarily think like me or like us (if there is an us), but … they think freely, as I thought and I think.
The spirit remains the same.
Promote debate, raise your awareness. This is why we met here, in what was and remains a unique place of cultural and political resistance.
Personally, I am quite pessimistic about the outcome of the debate on the future of Europe and I have said this in the House several times, both from the opposition and from the majority (including the last time ). A pessimist is a well-informed optimist. My pessimism is of this nature: factual, not ideological. This is also why it has not changed with the changing sides, and also for this reason the facts will validate it with the usual, unpleasant, regularity. For those who know what the timing of European legislative processes is, and what are the intentions of some of our important partners, it is quite easy to understand that the road to reform of the rules is all uphill. Today even the good ones have noticed! We must not hide it: we must work at our best preparing for the worst. An essential prerequisite for intervening correctly in this debate and for evaluating its evolution is to understand well why European fiscal rules are toxic. The reason I have briefly said in the classroom several times, but now the time has come to talk about it in depth. Only by identifying the root of the problem can we understand if we are really addressing it, and therefore, in a nutshell, what awaits us in 2023, when the general safeguard clause, which currently suspends the Stability and Growth Pact, will be deactivated ( and the rules, consequently, reactivated).
For this reason we have invited to Rome three economists who have expressed themselves with particular competence and originality on this issue: Zsolt Darvas , Philipp Heimberger and Antonella Stirati . The works will be introduced by the ID group leader, the honorable Marco Zanni , and by the honorable Antonio Rinaldi , member of the ECON Commission, who in some way are the hosts. A round table will follow with the participation of six economists from six majority parties (from left to right, Fassina, Nannicini, Marattin, Turco, Brunetta, Bagnai), moderated by Andrea Pancani. The meeting will be closed by the Hon. Claudio Borghi .
I think it is a very important opportunity to grow culturally, even if, in my opinion, we have a relative need for this: here we have anticipated practically all the events that have taken place from 2011 to today, from the deposition of Berlusconi in 2011, to the Tsipras's failure in 2014, Hollande's failure, austerity failure, the alliance between PD and 5 Stars (do you remember when it seemed impossible to you?), etc. But we must be humble: even those who have understood long after us have something to teach us, directly or indirectly: the very fact that so many have understood later is in itself information to be interpreted, assimilated, and taken into due account.
But what we all really need, I think, is to find ourselves together, after a long time, and before our annual meeting (which this year will take place on 15 and 17 October), to regain the sense of the battle that has led us to join us. It's not because they're right now about almost everything that we want to forget about how many other things they'll have to give us in the future. And it is not because we have learned to fight that we have given up fighting.
Or, at least, I didn't.
And now some practical information. We are still in times of COVID-19, so the Antonianum room cannot be used entirely. There are a couple of hundred seats available.
To book you will need to write an email to:
providing name and surname.
The sooner you arrive, the better you stay. The first 200 will receive a confirmation email (I warn you: it may take some time) and the others will try again in October. Given the rationing of seats (only 200 in a room of 600 people) I will be very grateful if for some reason, once booked, had an impediment, warn us (at Carolina's address) to make room for the first of the non-elected .
That's all for today.
Good night and good luck!
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2021/07/rebalancing-europe.html on Fri, 02 Jul 2021 20:06:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.