The delays in spending, which for too long have affected the South, are an obstacle to your freedom and a tax on your future ”. Prime Minister Mario Draghi today visited the A.Cuccovillo Higher Technical Institute in Bari. An opportunity to talk to young people but also an institutional moment to talk about the South, the first step after the commitments related to the completion of the vaccination campaign and the activation of funds from the NRP. “We feel proud that the first visit will take place here” declared the mayor of Bari and president of Anci, Antonio Decaro, who accompanied him to the institute.
And his speech started precisely from the praise of the excellence of the South, such as the institute that has become «an international excellence for mechatronics thanks also to high-level technical and scientific training. It represents a courageous and avant-garde South, where large foreign investments and small and medium-sized enterprises that want to grow, compete and innovate coexist. The process of convergence between North and South has been at a standstill for decades, we need to restart ». Then Draghi focused, like Mattarella yesterday at the University, on the education of young people: «An educational system that does not work feeds inequalities. The most prosperous societies are those that best prepare their young people to manage change ». Recalling how “in recent months, every time I have had the opportunity to meet them, I have been struck by their idealism, their skills, their dedication”. From the young diplomats who accompanied him during his visit to Tripoli to the doctors and nurses he met in Bergamo and at the vaccination center in Fiumicino, passing through the sports champions received at Palazzo Chigi.
In the midst of his speech, the Premier made a commitment: “After years in which Italy has often forgotten its girls and boys, know that your aspirations, your expectations, are today at the center of the action of the Government”. And he traced the line taken with the NRP: «The two transitions – the digital one and the environmental one – require a wide and ambitious planning, which must also involve our educational system. According to some estimates, the European Union will have to invest around 650 billion a year until 2030 to address them. We will have to build new infrastructures, reconvert our industrial fabric. And realign the demand and supply of skills, especially for highly specialized professions ». The National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the investment and reform program agreed with the European Commission, “puts you and your peers at the center” assures the Premier. Still promising about 1.5 billion euros to give further impetus to ITS.
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