Italy has been losing its place in the European governance landscape. The political and financial uncertainty that characterizes the country, along with a certain mistrust in its ability to recover (as noted by Daniel Gros in the first of his columns for LUISS Open), seems to have squeezed it out of the new Franco-German axis that’s shaping up after the victory in the elections by Emmanuel Macron and the much-anticipated one by Angela Merkel.
Nevertheless, it is crucial for our country to return to a central role in Europe, in order to promote the general interests of the European economic and monetary union, but also to ensure the protection of its most fragile members. A strategy to attain this result is offered in the new policy brief by the LUISS School of European Political Economy, as compiled by Carlo Bastasin, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Marcello Messori, Stefano Micossi, Franco Passacantando, Fabrizio Saccomanni and Gianni Toniolo.
The solution, according to these scholars, consists of trying to strike a balance between stability and growth, by streamlining public spending, by pursuing a tax reform that redistributes the burden of taxation and by implementing public investment projects to be funded, as far as possible, with European resources and through incentives to private investors.