Confindustria-Cgil, face to face on the future of Italian industry

Face-to-face between Confindustria president Emanuele Orsini and CGIL leader Maurizio Landini on the proposals to be put in place to relaunch industry. At the union's assembly of industry delegates, the number one industrialist and the secretary general of Corso Italia reiterated their respective recipes for overcoming the obstacles to the competitiveness of our production system, also highlighting some points in common.

"We pay 2-3 times more for energy than other European countries,' Orsini said, 'to create the conditions for lowering the cost of energy, the way forward is a mix of nuclear energy and renewables. For renewables we need to build a path to identify suitable areas, also simplifying the processes for authorisations'. The context worries everyone: 'The word uncertainty is one of the ones we breathe the most,' Orsini added. There is the energy shock coming from the Gulf war, with all the difficulties of producing in our country. A month ago we presented a report claiming that if the war ended quickly we would be at 0.5 per cent, if it continues the risk is recession. Together we must govern the transition this is the common challenge'.

For Landini 'industry remains a fundamental element of development but we will not be saved if we remain like this, confirming the status quo. The point is how we transform the industrial system starting with the energy issue, if the war goes on the situation will be worse than at Covid. Security means first of all being autonomous on the energy front, the amount of energy required will increase with artificial intelligence. We need an extraordinary energy policy plan. We need to invest in renewable energy sources, there are 1,700 projects that are at a standstill because of bureaucracy, you have to wait months for authorisations. But this discussion must be done by involving the social partners, we want to be protagonists as social partners in the industrial transformation'.

Freeing up public resources with exemptions to the stability pact? For the president of Confindustria, Emanuele Orsini, 'now is the time to make common debt; I believe what was said yesterday' by Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti is right, 'you cannot treat a war wound with aspirin. Incentives are needed for enterprises to overcome this moment. We are ready to invest more, but we need two conditions: certain rules - the implementing decrees for the hyper-amortisation immediately - and to govern the transitions. Europe must be Europe. If there is any country that cannot do it alone, we cannot leave it behind

Similar positions were expressed by Landini, according to whom extraordinary situations call for extraordinary responses: 'Owe need to suspend the Stability Pact in Europe. As at the time of Covid, when the EU invented the NRP, we now need to suspend the Stability Pact to favour public and private investment. We need a role for the public, I am thinking of the Ilva affair, which otherwise cannot be saved. An industrial policy has to be defined in the automotive sector, unions and Federmeccanica have been asking for about two years to affromtare the issue of the crisis in the sector at Palazzo Chigi