Emergency and reconstruction were the two keywords used by President Mario Draghi in the speech in which he sought a vote of confidence from the Senate.
The vaccination plan, schools, and then the public investments needed to overcome the economic crisis induced by the pandemic, by making use of the funds that will come from Next Generation EU, the major recovery and resilience plan adopted by the European Union. With particular attention to gender equality, the South, and certain reforms considered fundamental, such as those of the tax system, justice, and public administration. But above all, an energy and environmental transition, made necessary also in light of the coronavirus pandemic itself.
Mario Draghi, in the policy statements with which he is today seeking a vote of confidence from the Senate for himself and his new government, begins with the Sars-cov-2 pandemic and does not shy away from the war metaphor, widely used especially in the first months of contagion last spring, to explain that "the main duty to which we are all called is to fight the pandemic by every means and to safeguard the lives of our fellow citizens. A trench in which we all fight together. The virus is everyone's enemy."
Both for those who have lost loved ones – "it is in the heartfelt remembrance of those who are no longer with us that our commitment grows" – and for those who today are suffering from the economic crisis – "we are aware of their enormous sacrifice and we thank them. We commit to doing everything possible so that they may return, in the shortest possible time, with their rights recognised, to the normality of their daily lives."
But in Draghi's speech, the metaphor of war as destruction is followed by that of the post-war period as reconstruction, which is the true focus of the address. And at this point comes the first quotation, from Cavour ("reforms carried out in time, rather than weakening authority, strengthen it"), even though the role he sketches for himself is more akin to that of Alcide De Gasperi, the premier of reconstruction. "The government – he says – will carry out reforms but will also tackle the emergency. Today we have, as the governments of the immediate post-war period did, the possibility, or rather the responsibility, to begin a new reconstruction. Italy rose from the disaster of the Second World War with pride and determination and laid the foundations of the economic miracle through investment and work. That reconstruction was a joint effort by political forces that were ideologically distant, if not opposed. I am certain that in this new reconstruction too, no one will withhold, while maintaining their distinct roles and identities, their own contribution. This is our mission as Italians: to hand on a better and more just country to our sons and daughters and grandchildren."
It is no secret that the government led by Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank, will be driven by a strong pro-European outlook, but also, the Prime Minister adds, will be "a leading player in the Atlantic Alliance, in keeping with the great Western democracies, in defence of their indispensable principles and values. To support this government means sharing the irreversibility of the choice of the euro, means sharing the vision of an ever more integrated European Union that will arrive at a common public budget capable of supporting countries during periods of recession. The nation states remain the point of reference for our citizens, but in areas defined by their weakness they cede national sovereignty in order to gain shared sovereignty." Mindful that "without Italy there is no Europe. But, outside Europe there is less Italy."
At the same time Draghi pledges to give answers to young Italians "whom we let down by forcing them to emigrate from a country that too often does not know how to recognise merit and has not yet achieved genuine gender equality. A question we cannot evade when we increase our public debt without having spent and invested to the best effect resources that are always scarce. Every waste today is a wrong we do to future generations, a subtraction of their rights."
Draghi naturally devotes a lengthy section of his address to the pandemic: 92,522 deaths, 2,725,106 citizens affected by the virus, "figures that are moreover underestimates," he observes, and "that have severely tested the national health system, diverting staff and resources away from the prevention and treatment of other conditions, with serious consequences for the health of many Italians," as well as having reduced life expectancy, hit employment, and compounded hardship with a 45 per cent increase in the newly poor, widening inequalities both immediately and in the longer term, owing to lost hours of schooling.
Schools prove to be one of the issues closest to the Prime Minister's heart: "Girls and boys, especially those in upper secondary schools, have received their schooling through distance learning which, while ensuring continuity of provision, cannot fail to create hardship and highlight inequalities: in the first week of February only 1,039,372 students (61.2 per cent of the total) had the service guaranteed through distance learning. Not only must we return quickly to a normal school timetable, even by spreading it across different time slots, but we must do everything possible, using the most appropriate methods, to make up the in-person teaching hours lost last year, especially in the regions of the South where distance learning encountered the greatest difficulties.
But beyond the pandemic and the emergency, Draghi's thinking also encompasses a future to be built on a different and entirely new development model, in keeping with the social and environmental resilience called for by NextGenerationEU, or the three Ps of people, planet, prosperity. "When we emerge – and we will emerge – from the pandemic, what world will we find? Science, but simply common sense, suggests it may not be the same one. Global warming has direct effects on our lives and our health, from pollution to hydrogeological fragility to the rise in sea levels that could render large parts of some coastal cities uninhabitable. The space that some megacities have taken from nature may have been one of the causes of the transmission of the virus from animals to humans."
At this point came the second quotation, this time from Pope Francis: "Natural tragedies are the earth's response to our mistreatment of it. And I think that if I asked the Lord what he thinks, I don't believe he would tell me it is a good thing: it was we who ruined the Lord's work." Words spoken on the occasion of the last Earth Day, on 21 April 2020. And so, according to Draghi, "protecting the future of the environment, reconciling it with progress and social wellbeing, requires a new approach: digitalisation, agriculture, health, energy, aerospace, cloud computing, schools and education, protection of territories, biodiversity, global warming and the greenhouse effect are different facets of a multifaceted challenge that places at its centre the ecosystem in which all human actions will unfold." The Ministry for Ecological Transition, created for the first time within this very government, will be entrusted with the task of guiding that change.