Investment and reform: Recovery Plan needs radical changes

The absolute priority remains the vaccination plan, but this must be followed by a real recovery plan, made up not only of financial resources but also of adequate reform programmes.

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Recovery Plan reforms

by Rossano Salini |

A year after the beginning of the pandemic crisis that has upset, against all odds, the whole world, given that the absolute priority today is the vaccination campaign, we must begin to deal with reconstruction by focusing on three essential aspects: the economy, reforms, schools.

The recent jumble of anniversaries is accompanied by a fact that belongs entirely to the sphere of the present: we have passed the threshold of 100 thousand deaths for Covid. One hundred thousand in one year is a lot, a lot. They are a wound for a nation, just as the generations wiped out by the war were indelible wounds.

Crisis not only for the deaths, but also for many other aspects. Social crisis, with young people who are paying a high price for the closures in terms of lack of training and psychological fragility, matured in these months in which their growth path has been effectively broken. An increasingly serious and devastating economic crisis, especially in some sectors literally knocked to the ground by the restrictions implemented. Political crisis and crisis of the ruling class, which in recent months has repeatedly highlighted its inadequacies and is now facing a challenge of radical change that we hope will be taken up once and for all.

The figure of a hundred thousand dead, however, remains there like a boulder. Like a warning. Like a grim reminder that, truly and not rhetorically, we must banish all futility and concentrate all our forces with realism and operativeness to get out of this situation as soon as possible and definitively.

The hope of a breakthrough 

The change in government, with the installation of Mario Draghi as Prime Minister and with the changes he has implemented in the entire chain of command linked to the practical and operational management of the pandemic crisis (Civil Protection and Commissioner), gives hope for a turnaround that will really give the final acceleration to start looking with confidence to the next. This government, beyond the reasons that triggered the crisis and that frankly have already passed into oblivion in which they are abandoned so many small political contingencies, was born with a real and solid priority, which stands out above all: to erase all the mistakes made in the start of the vaccination campaign and throw headlong to ensure that by summer most of the population has received the vaccine.

The vaccination campaign is the absolute and undisputed priority of all national politics right now. We must close on that, and then really be able to focus on reconstruction. Set this as an absolute priority, the fact remains that of course reconstruction must begin to deal with it now, to plan and get ready. All of this by concentrating on three essential aspects: the economy, reforms and schools.

Recovery Plan: investments, but also reforms

The Minister for the Economy, Daniele Franco, took stock of the economic recovery and clarified the official figure for the figures made available by Europe with the Recovery Plan, i.e. 191.5 billion (and not the 209 previously indicated), divided into 69 billion in transfers and the remaining 127 billion in loans . There are strategic investments, particularly in the digital sphere, but there are also radical changes to be implemented in our country, which touch on central points, such as the tax knot, the Public Administration, and the functioning of Justice. We've already had occasion to say that the birth of the Draghi government is an opportunity for general reform of the system that shouldn't be missed. Not because Draghi is the deus ex machina capable of resolving who knows what, but because under his leadership a real government of national unity has been put in place in which those little vetoes and divisions of a political-partisan nature that have too often slowed down much-needed reformist thrusts in the last period can finally be put aside. And even more necessary today, when we all know very well that an extraordinary investment plan, in a context that is however old and unable to implement it fully, would have the effect of achieving things that do not last, and that moreover leave us with only accumulated debt.

At the centre of education and training

If the economy and reforms are thus inextricably linked, the fact remains that the other pillar, namely schools, must once again be at the centre of the political world's concerns. These months have been a devastating wound for young people, who have had to endure a situation of unparalleled exceptionality. Without going back to the issue of what should be done, of closures yes or no for the school: what matters is that we have realized as never before that without school the country goes nowhere. That talking about young people without talking about school makes no sense, because their lives revolve around this element and when this is missing they are the first to feel lost. The economic rebirth will have to pass from a centrality of the formation of the younger generations. It could also be a time to reflect on some of the structural defects of our system, from the governance of schools to the careers of teachers, on which action has long been needed.

A complex general framework, therefore, which will have to be implemented in the coming months, hopefully without obstacles and on the thrust of a renewed spirit of unity by the political forces. First the absolute and undisputed priority of the vaccination plan, to put behind us once and for all the tragedy marked in recent days by the terrible data on one hundred thousand deaths, then a restart plan true, which is not only made of financial resources but also adequate reform programs.


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