Guttenberg: just a first step
A collective awareness could be useful for Next Generation Eu to truly be the opening of a new phase. Today “it is a tool limited in time and resources,” he explained Lucas Guttenberg, an economist at the Jacques Delors Institute in Berlin, who also believes it could become “a first step towards a common fiscal policy”: in the past, he specified, it would not have been possible, all kinds of objections would have arisen. Also in the future “political discussions will be needed, and also legal ones, but in politics what has been done once can be done several times.”
The future of the Union is at stake
Much will depend on how the plan is implemented. “The future of the European Union will depend on the success of the national plans, and above all on the Italian one, which is the largest,” said Buti, specifying that even in the future, possible discussion on the stability pact, “mutual trust will be crucial. of member countries which will depend on the implementation of national plans “.
Merler: Italy net beneficiary
Italy will therefore have an important role, but the plan can help us. In a country that suffers – he explained Silvia Merler, economist at Algebris Investments – of low growth, also linked to the high public debt, but also of a limited political will to intervene structurally (due, substantially to the political volatility of the country), the plan introduces “long-term structural policies, that mitigate the historical problem we have ». Just as the burden of the debt “the fact that Italy becomes a net beneficiary” of the European Union mitigates. In this sense, the country becomes more attractive from the point of view of investors.
Sapelli: involving small and medium-sized enterprises
It is important though – concluded the economist and historian Giulio Sapelli – that the rate of economic growth exceeds that of debt (or the interest rate, as Buti suggested). In this sense, the plan, which will lead to “capitalist and even bureaucratic centralization”, accompanied by a disintegration of policies in Spain, France, Germany and Italy, involves small and medium-sized enterprises. “The plan does not make them protagonists”, he explained, while “governing the economy from above is very difficult”. Also because, he explained, Europe with the Recovery Plan enters the world of the regulated economy without a rule of law, without a European constitution and with countries with different powers.