Historical fragilities are still present

The positive data on the South are confirmed, but many fragilities and unknowns remain due to the new war in the Middle East.

Let's start with the former. The Check-up Mezzogiorno, a study curated by Confindustria and SRM, Intesa Sanpaolo's study centre, certifies that in the 2019-2024 period, the cumulative growth of southern GDP (+7.7%) has exceeded the national one (+5.8%) by 2 percentage points. "The historic gap has not been overcome," explains Salvio Capasso, head of enterprise and territories at Srm, "but there is a turn towards convergence. What drove the positive dynamic in 2025 was above all investment, which grew by 4.3 points, supported in part by the NRP and European programming that has now reached the spending stage. And helped by the Zes Unica for Southern Italy. Employment also grew by 0.8% (more than the national figure).

But the long list of historical fragilities still remains. In many regions there is still a lack of infrastructure (think of the inland areas or large areas of Basilicata and Calabria that suffer from severe isolation), which is associated with a lack of services, with increasingly poor and inadequate healthcare (in Molise, the mayor of Isernia lives in a tent to protest against the closure of areas of the city hospital). But most worrying of all is the problem of depopulation: almost 350,000 young graduates under 35 left the South between 2002 and 2024, generating a loss of over 270,000 units net of returns. By 2024, 23,000 qualified young people had moved north and over 8,000 abroad. And now we have to add the phenomenon of 'grandparents with suitcases': between 2002 and 2024 from 96,000 they have become over 184,000, as revealed by Luca Bianchi, director of Svimez.

The picture becomes more complicated with the conflict in the Middle East. Analysts are struggling to make forecasts. Exports, which had already contracted slightly in 2025, could suffer further blows, especially due to the presence in Southern Italy of small companies with regional sales basins. Although there is already - they say at Srm - a repositioning underway and the resumption of relations with North Africa. Heavy repercussions are feared due to the increase in energy costs on a productive fabric dependent on imports. At the moment, tourism also fears a halt in flows. But there is hope: if the conflict were to end in the short term,' Srm points out, 'the South could intercept the flow of high-spending tourism hitherto oriented towards the Arab Emirates, Turkey and Egypt.