On industry and SEZs in the South, the EU Commission calls for more selection and targeted measures

Desk-written industrial policies do not move results and statistics. And they do not easily change the productivity levels of a country that has always lagged behind in European comparison. These are considerations that, in a nutshell, can be gleaned from the European Commission's Country Report on Italia, just published together with the usual Recommendations.

The focus is on the lack of alignment between the strategic documents that should dictate the government's course for relaunching industry. Italia,' the Commission notes, 'has taken a first step in defining a national industrial strategy, but further effort is needed to implement it and to align it with the development strategy for the South. On the one hand, there is the Made in Italy 2030 white paper published by the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy, and on the other, Palazzo Chigi's plan for the Special Economic Zone of Southern Italy. Documents that do not talk to each other, is the thesis, and remain on too labile an operational level: 'Although they clearly identify the challenges facing the country, they do not provide clear policy actions.

The book Made in Italy 2030 identifies 18 strategic sectors, 'many of them with low added value, without a defined strategic priority or clear territorial objectives, risking making the efforts of public intervention non-selective and, consequently, ineffective in a context of limited resources'.

The Mezzogiorno needs further reflection. Because here, productivity per hour worked, if the figure for the EU-27 is 100, slips to 82 compared to 114 for the North-West, bearing witness to a gap that has only partly been reduced by the NRP effect and is fuelled by historical differences in production activities. While waiting for a more comprehensive plan for the South, on which the government has said it wants to work, the Commission's judgement is all about the Special Economic Zone programme. "It is the main policy initiative to support the development of the South," says Brussels, "but there is a need for more territorially targeted measures. Although the single authorisation works and the extension of the tax credit for investments on a three-year basis is an important signal, 'the current design of the SEZ does not promote industrial advancement in the South because of its non-selective nature'.

Some trajectories are mapped out, but more in-depth work needs to be done. For the Brussels officials, for example, investments in space economy technologies, also financed by the NRP, are going in the right direction, and in the Mezzogiorno, production chains can be articulated more comprehensively, starting with some major investments initiated in Campania, Puglia and Sicily in dual-transition technologies: batteries, renewables, microelectronics.