A process is underway which does not seem to leave much room for maneuver for the industries of old Europe, squeezed as they are between the costs of an increasingly less sustainable welfare system and energy prices higher than those of competing countries. Not to mention the constraints imposed by an environmental transition and the thousands of bureaucratic rules invented by Brussels officials.
When I worked in Bergamo in the early 1980s, the white industry was among the most important in the province. From the factories of Candy, Philco and Zerowatt came washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators and freezers, products that employed hundreds of people. After some time, nothing of those realities anymore exists except, sometimes, the brands. And yet I remember that more than forty years ago the signs of what would happen could already be glimpsed: the national household appliance industry was beginning to be attacked by those of Eastern countries and by Asian competitors. From which it was possible to understand that without innovation, but above all without a significant reduction in costs, including that of labour, the realities that had accompanied the economic boom of the Sixties and transformed the lives of millions of families, entering the kitchens and bathrooms of the Italians, would have been wiped out. As it actually was.
If you retrace the history of the sector, perhaps leafing through the advertisements in old issues of Panoramawe find a cemetery of well-known names. In addition to the aforementioned, there are Zanussi, Ignis, Indesit, Zoppas, Castor: all or almost all of which have disappeared. At most a few brands remain alive, but the companies have long since changed hands, from founders to investors, and production has often been transferred abroad. The latest example in chronological order concerns Beko, a Turkish group that owns various brands, including Indesit and Ignis, which in recent weeks announced the closure of some factories and the dismissal of two thousand employees.
Why am I interested in the decline of the so-called white industry? Because in my opinion it represents better than a lot of talk the risk that large European companies are running, from the automotive industry to the chemical industry, from manufacturing to machine tools. We talk about it on page 14 with an investigation by Guido Fontanelli, who in addition to retracing the many corporate crises that are dumped on the table of the Ministry of Economic Development, talks about a process that does not seem to leave much room for maneuver for the industries of old Europe, squeezed as they are between the costs of an increasingly less sustainable welfare system and energy prices higher than those of competing countries. Not to mention the constraints imposed by an environmental transition and the thousands of bureaucratic rules invented by Brussels officials.
Little by little, the continent’s factories are losing ground and to save themselves, many are emigrating, moving arms and baggage abroad: sometimes to the United States, other times to more fiscally or productively convenient countries.. A phenomenon which, from my point of view, began many years ago and which now, if the rules of the game are not changed in the EU, risks ending disastrously for millions of workers.
Unlike those who took to the streets in 2001 to protest against globalisation, convinced that the opening of markets would impoverish weak nations even further, I was already certain at the time that the opposite would happen. The battle against neoliberalism and multinationals has been useless, because globalization has not made emerging countries poor, but has strengthened them, producing the opposite effect in Europe. The GDP of the Brics, but not only of China, Brazil and India, is growing, while that of the EU is decreasing. If once a famous definition described the Old Continent as an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm, today the first belief must be revised downwards, because Europe is no longer the colossus we believed it to be.
Shots of Industry: 160 years of Ansaldo on display
Shots of Industry: 160 years of Ansaldo on display
2025 presents itself with a war upon us that does not bode well, but above all with an America that aims to strengthen itself, imposing duties and measures to encourage internal industry. And us? In Brussels, the People’s Party, Socialists and Greens continue to argue, without realizing that the issue to pay attention to is not the seats and delegations of the commissioners, but the danger of industrial desertification. A risk that is not far away, but around the corner.
