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15 juin 2005 — En marge de l’actuelle crise européenne, cette analyse de l’actuelle crise italienne est intéressante dans la mesure où elle nous fait comprendre combien les deux sont connectées. Elle nous conduit également à constater que les divers facteurs généraux de la crise italienne se retrouvent peu ou prou dans nombre de pays européens, selon des répartitions différentes. On peut alors déduire que la crise de la structure européenne est aussi le reflet, ou le relais si l’on veut, des crises nationales diverses.
L’analyse est de Federico Bordonaro, analyste indépendant travaillant pour la société d’analyse PINR. On retrouve dans son analyse à la fois sociologique, économique et politique, un point qui va devenir une constante du débat en cours : l’affirmation que l’une des causes de la crise italienne est l’incapacité de l’Italie de se dégager de sa totale soumission aux Etats-Unis en matière de politique extérieure et de sécurité. La même chose nous est dit par Jonathan Steele aujourd’hui, mais pour l’Europe : l’une des trois décisions nécessaires pour mettre un terme à la crise européenne, c’est l’indépendance politique qui doit être marquée par la liquidation de l’OTAN.
Ce point ontologique de la crise européenne pèse sur tous les débats. Il ne cessera de peser de plus en plus.
By Federico Bordonaro, 13 June 2005, PINR
Recent proposals of quitting the Euro and linking a “new Lira” to the U.S. dollar, made by Italian Welfare Minister Roberto Maroni of the Northern League party, signal a crisis in Italian society, and a rift between some political and industrial domestic elites. The malaise of Italy — which has been in recession since the beginning of the year — is being heatedly debated after the French and Dutch rejection of the E.U. Constitutional Treaty, for recent Italian history is inextricably intertwined with the European integration process. However, the economy and the effects of the European Monetary Union cannot, alone, elucidate the reasons for the Italian crisis: geopolitics and the economy, if considered as an integrated whole, can explain it better.
In Search of a Scapegoat: the Euro
Italy is the only big E.U. country with an economy in recession since 2005. In the first quarter of this year, the Italian G.D.P. scored a poor display, with the G.D.P. falling by 0.5 percent, against 1.1 percent G.D.P. growth in Germany, and 1.7 percent growth in France, to remain among the Euro-zone countries (the U.K. scored a 2.7 percent growth rate in the same period). These data already show an empirical reality: there are important differences in the Euro-zone, a fact that should put analysts on the alert while assessing the impact of the single currency upon the Italian crisis. This latter can be clarified by a brief look at the country's socio-economic structure.
Italy's economy experienced a decisive period of blossoming between the late fifties and the mid-sixties of the last century, when, apart from family-owned giants (F.I.A.T., Pirelli and others) and big public companies (E.N.I., E.N.E.L.), a myriad of northern small and medium enterprises rose and stood out in sectors such as textiles, machine tools, food processing and furniture. Their success in the 20th century's second half was largely due to a low cost-base and to the Italian Lira's intentional devaluation, which boosted their competitiveness even if innovation and productivity were relatively slower and lower in comparison with the German or French economies.
The introduction of a common European currency, the Euro, has denied the Italian small/medium enterprise the use of the strategic devaluation. At a time of intense competition with the Chinese textile, food processing and similar sectors, this fact largely explains the entrepreneurs' rage against the Euro, and the Northern League's proposals of a return to a national currency. It also explains why the Euro — considered merely as a currency and not as part of a long political/economic integration process — is now very unpopular and is often used as a scapegoat by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's right-of-center government. An informal political alignment is apparently taking shape, linking the north-eastern entrepreneurship to middle and low classes worried by the fall of their purchasing power — a fall caused by the growth of food and basic goods' prices, high unemployment and reductions in the welfare state.
This reasoning, however, hides the fact that influential factions of Italian elites do not share this negative view on the Euro. Bankers, big businesses and liberal politicians still perceive the Euro as both a stabilizing tool for an increasingly weak economy, and as a prestigious political success. What is more important, the currency-based explanation of the crisis suggested by Maroni conceals Italy's serious decline in high-tech and the primary industrial sectors, and the ruinous consequences of corrupted and inefficient corporate governance.
The country's industrial decline has reached unprecedented levels. F.I.A.T. is progressively abandoning its principal market in automobiles; food processing giants like Cirio and Parmalat underwent disastrous frauds and financial cracks; and the primary sector seems incapable of a new beginning. Italy looks like a tertiary-based state that is just incapable of absorbing manpower released by its decaying big industries. And, in fact, nobody believes anymore in "small is beautiful" because the small/medium enterprise obviously isn't living in a pneumatic void, but tightly linked to the country's fundamentals.
Last, but not least, the Northern League's view fails to assess the real stake of the economic and monetary sovereignty's loss and, additionally, it says nothing about decisive geopolitical — and not economic — issues.
Geopolitical and Demographic Aspects of the Italian Crisis
Since 1989, Italy's political and economic discourse has been dominated by issues that are both geopolitical and economic in nature. European political and economic integration has been the dominating theme and the official goal of all governments since then. At the same time, relentless rhetoric about the importance of knowledge, technology innovation, and education as the real “capital” of the 21st century has been divulged by almost all politicians and decision makers. After 15 years, however, it appears that Italy's integration into the E.U. is not bringing the desired effects citizens were told it would, and it must be pointed out how almost nothing has been done to put into practice the good words on education, research and technology.
In fact, Italy is increasingly dependent upon the U.S. for its security and foreign policy, and upon the E.U. for its economic policy. It's easy to show how European integration and the E.U.'s Common Foreign and Security Policy (C.F.S.P.) — which have progressed in the last 15 years — have not lead Rome to a clear reassessment of its foreign policy in the direction of a European solidarity advocated by Paris and Berlin. During the 2003 Iraq crisis, Italy did not follow the Franco-German combine's diplomatic strategy and, instead, joined the U.S.-U.K. line, together with Poland and other European states. Before that, Rome had already upset Paris by refusing to buy Airbus' A-400M military transport aircraft and by planning to buy the Joint Strike Fighter, a multi-role U.S. fighter aircraft in direct competition with European projects.
From a geoeconomic point of view, Italy's struggle to be accepted into the Euro-zone has caused the country's economic policy — already confronted by an enormous public debt — to be almost completely directed toward this goal. As a result, in order to submit to an E.U. demanding the Growth and Stability Pact's rules, Rome has lost the capability to bring on any ambitious public spending policy.
These two geopolitical underlying facts — the persistence of a U.S.-centric foreign policy and the rise of the European Union — concurred in hampering the emergence of policies suited to safeguard Italy's prosperity, security and competitiveness. At the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Italian Education Minister Letizia Moratti significantly responded to university researchers, who were protesting because of the lack of funding and jobs, explaining that Italy's commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan demanded economic sacrifices and, therefore, a change in the destination of economic resources was needed. However, the link between Italian military involvement in U.S.-led operations and the orientation of public spending tends to be underestimated by many observers. Similarly, the government's programs for public works and infrastructures frequently clash against the E.U. Growth and Stability Pact's strict rules concerning deficit limits.
Italian classical geopolitical interests — i.e. stability and security of the Euro-Mediterranean area and advantageous economic exchange with south-eastern Europe and north-African countries — seem to be subordinated to the U.S.' “Greater Middle East” project and to the Franco-German political and economic leadership in the E.U. Italy's integration into this latter has called for a set of demanding fiscal and financial policies, but a large part of the population observe that it hasn't successfully protected its national interests against the rise of foreign competitors, China in particular. Some exponents of Berlusconi's government have therefore called for the introduction of a customs duty by the E.U., a move which looks extremely complicated, both for its implications and because the European Union has been built upon free market principles.
At the same time, another fact is playing a decisive part in Italy's depression: the demographic decline. No international power has ever succeeded in enhancing its interests and its viability as an influential geopolitical actor when caught in a serious demographic crisis. Italy is nowadays the E.U. country with the highest percentage of elderly, and its population is increasingly growing older. In the period of 1981-2001, the Italian population grew a tiny .8 percent. In the same years, the ratio of elderly among the citizens doubled. Subsequent troubles for the labor market and pensions are all too obvious. However, analysts often underestimate the consequences of the combination between political weakness and instability — a long-term Italian problem — and the demographic decline. The result is the inner rigidity of a system incapable of successfully renewing its decision makers and progressively more inclined to nepotism and corrupted methods of cooptation, making meritocracy and dynamism irrelevant rhetoric exercises.
A vicious circle is now at play: the demographic decline fosters the lack of change, thus worsening the country's delay in innovation, research and job creation; these latter consequences urge the most talented minds to go abroad in search of well-paid jobs and prestige, plus a large part of the youth finds it hard to get married and have children. This fact makes the demographic decline clearly more acute.
In Search of a Turning Point
One year before the 2006 political elections, Italy is in search of a turning point. Its political parties and prominent statesmen, however, have not significantly changed since 1996, and don't seem to be the ones who could successfully make the necessary, yet difficult, choices to revitalize the country. What is certain though, is that Italy badly needs a more flexible and free economic policy. This explains why Berlusconi's government happily reacted to France's and Germany's recent proposal of a renegotiation of the E.U. Growth and Stability Pact, and also why it hasn't showed so much unhappiness with the French and Dutch rejections of the E.U. Constitutional Treaty.
If Italy cannot receive the necessary freedom to effectively finance ambitious programs in the field of information and communication technology, defense technology, education, public works and infrastructure, it will be impossible to escape the economic crisis. However, research and development financing should not be conceived as government aid to declining big enterprises, but instead as a tool to create independent, strongly meritocratic research institutes.
Additionally, while searching for strategic partnerships with rising or energy-rich countries beyond the rigid supranational E.U. framework, Rome's interests lie in cooperating with regional powers to create a more balanced and less volatile Euro-Mediterranean environment, thus avoiding further military adventures susceptible to ruin the country's mediation role in the Middle East, and its perspectives in the North African, Balkans and Black Sea regions.
Conclusion
Italy's crisis is caused not only by monetary and economic reasons, but also by geopolitical and demographic underlying realities. While the general framework looks worrisome and the country's decision makers increasingly divided and ineffective in their action, Italian history shows that the nation has more than once been capable of quick and unexpected recovery. In order to succeed, a strategic reorientation is needed both domestically and in foreign policy — which appears extremely difficult. However, if the international system will progressively change its structure from unipolarity to multipolarity, new windows of opportunity could turn up for Rome, on conditions that its political and economic elites will take the chance to forge new strategic partnerships, and to implement effective policies to counter the demographic wane.
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