Were the European Union and the euro were a good deal? The question is lawful in the aftermath of the German elections and in the light of the data that testify to a vertical fall in the production capacity of the eurozone. In 2024 it fell by 2 percent compared to 2023. In the last five years – from 2019 to today – Germany has lost 9.3 percent, France 5 and Italy 3.5 percent. According to our country and the season of privatizations in 1992-94 that industrial production collapsed and with the start of the euro the Italian economy has practically stopped. Tommaso Monacelli of the Bocconi University was noticed in a study of a couple of years ago that “in cumulative terms, starting from 1990 until 2022, the Italian economy grew, on a per capita base, of only 19 percentage points, while the average of the euro area grew by 46 percentage points”.
All this while developing – with double -digit growth – the countries of the North and former Soviets who do not have the euro (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic), increase the economic performances of Belgium and Denmark, By virtue of a lower cost of energy, and also of Greece where wages very below the continental average in the manufacturing have favored a productive relocation on the banks of the Dodecanese. A Bundesbank report is significant, which is taken from the now famous of “Draghi Dossier” of the past few months in which two data are made that become emblematic in the light of the tears imposed by Donald Trump on the world structure: “If the EU were to maintain its average productivity growth rate from 2015, it would be sufficient only to keep the constant GDP until 2050”; And again: «A large gap in the GDP has opened between the EU and the United States, guided mainly by a more pronounced slowdown in productivity growth in Europe. European families paid the price of the loss of the standard of living. On a per capita base, the real available income has grown almost double in the United States compared to the EU since 2000 ».
The recent results of the German elections They are the plastic representation of this “loss” and draw the existence of a double Germany on the map of electoral consensus. It has returned, to use a joke of the comic Uwe Steimle, the Hostalgies That is, the nostalgia of communist Germany where it was dignity worse, while today in the Eastern Landers the right of alternatives Für Deutschland triumphs itself preciously better.
At the time of unification German Chancellor Helmut Kohl declared: “We are here to build a European Germany and not a Germanic Europe.” The central European giant, however, has imposed its budget rules, made the most of its exports especially towards China, has reduced its costs thanks to Russian gas, contained the internal demand and investments. He used the industries of other states as subcontractors and in particular the Italian one, which is still the second manufacture of the old continent.
The test? It is not in the factory, but in the supermarket: with Schwarz (also includes Lidl), Edeka, Ardi and Rewe controls 15.2 percent of the European distribution market. Four subjects put together just under 440 billion euros in turnover, a quarter of the entire Italian GDP. And they buy low cost to resell at a more expensive price. But now the Bundesbank estimates that also this year Germany will be in recession – further contraction of the GDP of 0.2 points – and the German crisis, dramatic the thud of the car, highlights the failure of the Union model. Aggravated by the regulatory constraints that gradually produced Europe – the average time for a resolution is 19 months (See the service on bureaucracy in the Union on p. 16) – and above all by the ideologies of the Green Deal. Having done the damage now the president of the Ursula von der Leyen commission thinks he was reviewing the endothermic engines, the carbon tax.
Meanwhile, the innovative start-up emigrates: between 2008 and 2021, almost 30 percent of the so-called European “unicorns” moved to the United States. The American president Joe Biden, therefore, not the “enemy” Donald Trump, with the Reduction Inflation Act It has allocated a plan that is worth the multipliers two thousand billion dollars for companies, promoting decarbonisation and innovation. An irresistible attraction. The Wall Street Journal He writes that the German car manufacturers in 2023 invested € 15.9 billion in America, given that the production of vehicles up to 15 years ago was the prerogative of Europe and the USA (75 percent of the market) and today it is 60 percent in Asia. John Elkann has decided to invest five billion in the States and nothing in Italy, in the face of a collapse of over 70 points of Stellantis’s turnover. With almost 290 billion dollars in 2023, America was the first foreign investment market. Why? An indirect response comes from Alessandro Riello to the head of Aermec (almost half a billion in turnover in the air conditioning sector) which says: «Enough Europe with the Green Deal and a suffocating bureaucracy, we go to produce in the United States. We already have an investment of 25 million, then we will see ».
For 30 years Italy has lost industries. Professor Vincenzo Comito, professor of Business Economics at Sapienza and Urbino, highlighted that “in 2023 Europe recorded only 6.7 percent of world industrial investments, against 54.5 of Asia and 28.5 of the United States”. Inevitable, given that in the EU of the 2000s the then president of the Roman Commission Prodi opened the doors to China which the following year was admitted without a condition in the World Trade Organization, the World Organization of Commerce, thanks to the American president Bill Clinton. Europe was deluded that China remained the world factory from which to draw at low costs. The largest European airports, from Hamburg to Rotterdam, have become the entrance door of the competition of the dragon. The result is that – the data is of Financial Times – The old continent went from 20 percent of the world GDP in 1993 to 13.3 percent today. The same trajectory had Italy.
In the season of privatizations wanted by Minister Beniamino Andreatta – and put into practice by Mario Draghi al Tesoro and Romano Prodi at IRI and Palazzo Chigi – In the face of a consideration of 153 billion euros collected (of which 97 in the period 1994-2010) we lost some industrial and many giants: Montedison in chemistry, the EMS in the agri-food, the Ilva in the steel, the Stet and Telecom in communications and still the Autostrade, Finmare, the Alfa Romeo, the banks colonized by the French. However, some “debts” remained there. Two examples: the ex -Ilva chapter of Taranto is not yet closed (over one and a half billion has cost the taxpayer since the Riva family was ousted), Alitalia was sold to Lufthansa for 325 million but taxpayers put us 13.4 billion. Privatizations have served a single purpose: to hook the euro, but have unstructured entire industrial sectors. Already a few years ago, the scholar of the Bocconi University Francesco Daveri underlined: “After the entrance of our country in the euro and China in the WTO, the crisis following the failure of Lehman Brothers (2008) and after the recent mini-reception or stagnation of 2018-2019, the Italian industry is in decline, perhaps irreversible”. From this study it is obtained that: “made 100 the level of industrial production in 1991, the Italian industrial production index went up to 116.3 in 2000. Today there are 5 points missing compared to the 1991 production levels for the industry as a whole”.
There are still some “giants” such as Fincantieri, Leonardo, Stmicroelectronics, Stellantis herself even if in severe contraction, but the big names are banks, multiutility and energy companies, with Enel and Eni who have a strong industrial component. The industry as a whole now weighs for 18.1 percent on GDP (has lost two points from post-covid) and entire sectors from textiles to appliances, from paper to metallurgy, are in strong contraction. Confindustria’s investigation for 2024 shows that “only the energy sector has growth (+5.5 percent), while the capital goods (-10.7), intermediate (-9.5) and consumption (-7.3) are falling”. Confcommercio, for its part, tells that “in the manufacture of means of transport (-23.6 percent), in the textile industries, clothing, skin and accessories (-18.3) and in the metallurgy and manufacture of metal products (-14.6)” the crisis was heavy. At the Ministry of Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso faces 42 crisis tables for over one hundred thousand workers.
Despite this, in Italy there is a record of employed: over 24 million with a 6.8 percent unemployment rate. How is it possible? The industry hopes that a lot changes in Brussels with the liquidation of the Green Deal; the cut of the rates that the European Central Bank should continue and offer an opportunity; A stabilization of the markets can encourage export if Ukrainian and the Middle East are finally pacified. In January, expectations improved, therefore the companies confirm the 400 thousand jobs created in the last two years.
And then there is the great resource of the agri -food – the turnover touches 200 billion euros with over 6,500 companies and exports: It grew by 3.7 per cent making Italy the fourth country in the world. Matteo Zoppas, president of the Italian companies’ promotion agency abroad, a The sun 24 hours: “Italy is strong and the objective hoped for by the Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to reach 700 billion foreign turnover by 2027 can be reached”. The main problems must be solved in Brussels. The new EU commissioner for industry, the French Stéphane Séjourré, must respond to the objections of the Draghi dossier and get busy. The former president of the ECB writes: “There is no EU company with a capitalization of more than 100 billion euros that has been created from scratch in the last fifty years, all six US companies with an evaluation of more than a thousand billion euros have been created in this period. European companies have invested 270 billion less in innovation of the US. ” As for the “green revolution” Draghi adds: “There is a risk that the decarbonisation is contrary to competitiveness and growth. EU companies have to face electricity prices which are two to three times in the USA, the gas prices are four to five times higher ». So, by summing up: have Europe and the euro have been a good deal? n © RESERVED REPRODUCTION
