Very interesting for the contents and for the analysis made, the article by General Pasquale Preziosa, President of the Eurispes Security Observatory, and by prof. Dario Velo, well-known economist who contributed to the construction of the European Union by collaborating with A. Spinelli, J. Monnet and other European leaders.
Published on leurispes.it, Preziosa and Velo, after a clear and detailed description of the serious economic and health crisis linked to the COVID-19 emergency, indicate the strategy to be adopted to "mitigate the level of risk"Hoping for the need for an effective economic plan that helps all European countries to emerge from the emergency.
"It is true that, in order to have a functioning economy, good public health is needed, but it is also true that to have good public health we must have a functioning economy."
(by Pasquale Preziosa and Dario Velo) The International Monetary Fund has published the forecasts for the reduction of the Gross Domestic Product both worldwide and in the individual countries.
The fall in world GDP could be around 6,1%, the Eurozone GDP at 7,5% with Italy at 9,5%, the UK could suffer a 6,5% reduction while for the USA it is estimated at 5,9%.
All these forecasts will have to be reviewed at the end of the Pandemic and the data could be further revised downwards.
The situation is very serious in terms of both health and economics.
The economic one will soon make its effects felt on the financial one and therefore on the banks with an increase in non-performing loans (NPL), the famous bank bad debts.
The situation is close to that already suffered in 1929 with the great depression, with serious damage to the national security of many countries.
For the USA an unemployment level of 9% is expected also in 2021.
For the other countries there are no projections of unemployment levels at the moment, but they could be worse than the American ones.
The slowdown in economies will trigger the financial crisis. The most suffering economies are those already burdened by high public debt. For Italy, the first estimates of an increase in public debt indicate an increase of over 160% compared to GDP.
For these high levels of public debt, the political and administrative management of individual countries becomes very difficult, if not impossible; the increase in the already high public debt would increase the uncertainty of the sustainability of the debt itself.
Italy needs to change its pace and needs a strategic investment plan financed by the European Union. Funding is available but the plan has yet to be worked out.
The era of post-modernism is over, responsibilities and skills are needed to solve problems. The ability to decide is not up to technicians who can only give their assessments.
The decision on what to do is up to the political decision maker who indicates the lowest risk route for the country to ferry it out of the pandemic swamp in which all countries have fallen, safeguarding national security.
It is true that, in order to have a functioning economy, good public health is needed, but it is also true that to have good public health we must have a functioning economy.
In the European single market, the decisions of a Member State must be shared by the other members, all have equal political dignity.
The European Union is still the lifeline of many European States that will have to use all the financial instruments available to solve the economic, financial, health and unemployment problems resulting from the ongoing crisis, whose disastrous final effects are still to be accounted for.
Italy has not accumulated significant national and European economic and financial successes in recent decades, and has failed to create wealth.
Our country's inability to use European funding has long been monitored but still unresolved.
This problem is also repeated with national funding.
The ultimate cause is the inefficiency of the public administrations, more serious in the regions of the South than in the regions of Northern Italy, which also puts the private components of the economy in difficulty.
The country is experiencing a moment of discouragement because it does not see efficiency in political decision-making.
The country that loses hope, loses the future.
The two pillars that supported our country's security policy were: the NATO military political alliance and the European Union.
The defense of our country is guaranteed by the Alliance, instead finance has come from the European Union and the ECB.
The members of the European Union have decided not to share economic, fiscal, health, defense and security, intelligence and foreign policies, but to share (not all) only the single currency by renouncing the functions of the national central banks.
Today only the financial instruments voted unanimously are available to the Member States.
For the solution of the serious crisis in progress, it will be necessary to use all the approved financial mechanisms, including the Junker plan that started in 2014, creating the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) which with an initial investment of only 21 billion euro mobilized 315 billion of investments in the first three years of activity, following the two distinct lines (window): the Infrastructure and Innovation Window for long-term financing of businesses / consortia and the SME Window for financing for small and medium-sized enterprises through credit institutions in direct contact with funded companies (horizontal subsidiarity); and this to make European funding more effective.
A new € 500 billion loan from the Junker plan would develop an investment of € 7.500 billion.
Italy was the largest user of the Junker plan after France.
The pandemic is putting national security in many countries in crisis due to the serious damage caused by the lockdown to the economy, public debt, unemployment levels never experienced before, but also to the sustainability of the necessary levels of public health.
Mitigating the level of risk is an imperative for all governments, through coordinated targeted strategies for the revitalization of national GDPs in support of crisis areas.
Many European countries are not in a position to operate alone, as they lack adequate financial resources to cope with the great emergency.
Only the European Union in great coordination with the member countries will be able to guarantee the institutional stability of individual nations.