More Europe is needed

According to authoritative international sources, the worst of the economic crisis that has invested the world, following collapses of financial markets in the USA, is over. There are some who are hazarding the forecast that there will be a slow recovery from 2010, beginning from the USA itself and from the strongest economies, and then transmitting positive effects in the mid-term to other less solid or “developing” countries. No one, on the other hand, seems willing to offer a far-reaching diagnosis or make forecasts about the revival of employment or the future of family budgets. For this reason the European Union has called a new (though low key) summit to be held in Paris on 7 May: an extraordinary summit dedicated precisely to employment. In recent weeks three meeting to prepare for the event have been held: the first in Spain on 15 April, the second in Sweden on 20 April, and the third in the Czech capital on 27 April. The issues tackled at these meetings include the results of the measures adopted at the national level to stimulate recovery, the situations of the labour markets in the 27 member states, state aid to banks and small and medium businesses, and ways of supporting worker mobility.There is in fact a growing recognition – and the pre-summit meetings confirm it – that the recession has caught everyone unprepared, that even the world giants have feet of clay as a result of a “drugged” and potentially unstable financial system, and that there do not exist any universally valid recipes for recovery. At the same time it seems clear that the “plans” formulated by the individual states or agreed on at a higher level (EU, Central Banks, G20…) are having an effect that has still to be verified and that is in any case spread over time. One corollary – of extreme relevance – concerns the economies that we persist in called “developing”, such as those of Eastern Europe, China, Russia, India, the Arab countries, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. The crisis has struck at every latitude, with the result that, for the first time since the end of the war, world GDP is registering a downturn into negative territory. This has shown up even more complex problems in terms of the banks, the manufacturing system, and world trade, multiplying the “social repercussions” of the economic impasse. At Prague the representatives of the EU, member states, trades-union and employees organizations were called to review the situation of the labour market in Europe and discuss some weak structural points that the “single market” has revealed in this phase. Various economists have in fact pointed out that, on the virulent emergence of the recession, the member states of the Union hesitated to take the road of greater collaboration at the level of economic policies, with the consequent re-emergence of by now obsolete forms of nationalism, protectionism and colbertism. Moreover, the Twenty-Seven failed to recognize that the plurality of welfare systems and the variety of national labour markets did not play in favour of a European re-composition aimed at giving a prompt and determined response to the economic earthquake. The same might be said, especially looking into the future, of Europe’s inadequate energy policy, the multiplicity of tax systems present in the European Community, the fragmentation of applied research in the field of technological innovation and that of systems of the training of human resources, all the more indispensible in the global era, not least with reference to the economic challenges we face. In this sense, the present crisis, though its presents very high costs (in economic, social and employment terms), could represent a further opportunity to re-affirm, in a fast-changing world, that what’s needed is not less but “more Europe”.