13 Giugno 2012
Dear Minister Schäeuble,
Dear Prof. Rocholl,
Dear Mr. Diekmann,
Ladies and Gentleman,
It is a real honor for me to receive the “Responsible Leadership Award”, presented by such a prestigious institution as the European School of Management and Technology.
I was going to say, before Professor Rocholl took this away for me, that given the privilege of knowing this school a bit from the inside, I can certify that it is outstanding not only in Management but also in Technology, but I will turn this to say, obviously, that ESMT stands for “European School for Mute Technology”.
I would like to thank Doctor Diekmann and the members of the Selection Committee for having honoured me with this award.
I would like to express my very special gratitude to the distinguished friend and indeed mentor into the thinking and the acting about European integration, the Federal Minister, for his laudatio and his kind words: thank you very much Wolfgang!
I believe that you are the best example of European leadership, as you were recognized, just a few months ago in Aachen, with the Award of Schumann Prize.
Responsible leadership is a powerful principle, that is true not only for companies, but also for institutions and governments. As Peter Drucker, an expert well-known to this institution, stated: “Leaders in every single institution and in every single sector have two responsibilities: they are responsible and accountable for the performance of their institutions (…) and they are responsible also, however, for the community as a whole”.
This is a definition I can agree fully with and that I tried to apply whenever I had some position that I thought might have been of leadership at that time, until I tested the real demand for leadership in my government position.
I noticed that this award is awarded to a figure who has demonstrated a deep commitment to the principles of sustainability. So now I finally understand why I have been given this recognition: because among the notions of sustainability it is of course the sustainability of public finances and it is almost natural that you picked a gentleman from Italy as an example of a person experimenting this “difficult” version of sustainability.
But I have some comparable advantages in this task. I don’t have to face voters, as government leaders normally do. Of course I do have to face a Parliament and have their confidence, but they don’t have to go out to the streets to seek votes. I believe that this makes me and my colleagues in the government, and the distinguished colleague Vittorio Grilli is here with me today, if anything more, not less responsible. Our concern of everyday is to act for the common interest, in particular of the young people, who are not represented by unions or other powerful interest groups or lobbies, but struggle to find a job in my country as in so many, too many European countries.
And also in the interest of future generations, to avoid that they are passed on the cost of current policies and ensure they too enjoy the benefits of our welfare systems.
I believe that if during the course of my professional and academic life I have developed a very special admiration for German culture and policy making, it is precisely because of the principle of responsibility towards future generations that permits the whole politics and the whole the accumulation of the Sozial Markt Wissenchaft, that was invented in Germany, became through the various European treaties, so much so that the latest European treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, enshrines the principle that Europe strikes to be a highly competitive social market economy, and I think that the responsibility towards future generations is really what is behind fiscal discipline and behind the single currency itself.
I have always contested the notion that the euro is a highly sophisticated construction for markets, for bankers, for financial institutions. The euro is the symbol of intergenerational equity, because it had to come only accompanied by a number of fundamental rules, particularly, but not only, in the area of fiscal discipline, which are the guarantee of not only avoiding as much as possible contagion as among countries, but also avoiding the worst contagion of all that is putting burdens on the shoulders of the future generations of babies and then young men and women - and, too often, young and unemployed men and women - because the excesses of currency policies of previous generations.
I think that when we are engaged - as we had been engaged a few months ago - in the pension reform, for example, that is exactly to take care of future generations. The pension reform was a pretty drastic one, since it raised the legal retirement age to 67 for men and women, whether they worked in the private or public sector, and established a feature that I’m told exists only in Norway and Sweden so far, that is the linking of the retirement age to the future evolution of life expectancy, so as to make the pension system really sustainable.
Equally for the labour market reform, which is now in the case of Italy almost completing the legislative process through the Parliament. I know that there have been less good marks to begin with for the labour market reform, than have been for the pension reform, but I’m sure that upon further consideration we will see how powerful an impact it will have on the freedom to proceed to individual dismissal of workers without going through the scrutiny of judges, except for the case where discrimination is concealed behind an allegedly economic dismissal.
So all this is in the interest of the young. For example in Italy we had an overprotected labour market for those employed and totally unprotected, and practically an impenetrable labour market for the young, for the outsiders, for the excluded, that goes also for the so called liberal professions, for the services, an area where I know that Germany considers it still has a long way to go, and I think that services are so important for the European economy given that they account for some 70% of Europe’s GDP.
And what is exactly the opposite of sustainability, of leadership oriented towards future generations?
I believe the opposite is “short-termism” and the opposite of leadership is of course “followership” which is a more and more practiced activity in European countries and other continents as well.
Of course the word “leadership” is used more frequently, but I’m afraid the practice of followership is more frequent than the practice of genuine leadership.
The more we have situations, in domestic or international policies, where the effects expected from reforms come out only in the longer term, whereas the costs show upfront, then it really takes a lot of leadership, as Germany has displayed in so many occasions, for reforms to be nevertheless undertaken and brought to fruition.
Let me just expose another reflection: I believe that just as leadership has to be exercised and evaluated overtime in the interest of future generations, I think it also has to be exercised and evaluated over space, cross borders, in such an integrated world, and in particular in such a deep integrated Europe, whose integration we want to increase, and Germany and Italy are really on the same page concerning this. Every national leader necessarily has to take into account what the impact of his or her actions will be on the proper context.
I must confess here in Berlin, that actually I was in Berlin last November when I received a call from the President of the Italian Republic, asking me to take up a new job. I immediately felt that my responsibility would be of course about Italy, but, as the Federal Minister kindly mentioned, also about the future of the European monetary system and the European integration. The acute interest displayed by our American friends, including the President of the United States, for European developments shows how deeply felt are the good, we hope, but also the bad, we hope not, effects of what policies are doing in Europe.
And of course this also gives a special need for a psychological cooperation not only policy cooperation. I think that a profound, frank and mutual understanding, like the one we are honoured to have with the German Chancellor, with the Federal Minister, is a prerequisite for joint responsibility and collective leadership.
I would simply say that I agree very much with what the Federal Minister said concerning our imminent common challenges at the European level. I think that we need to work for the pedagogical explanation in first place, and then for the actual decision making and implementation in the second place, of the need for fiscal discipline and growth at the same time.
Fiscal discipline generates austerity and austerity is not sustainable in the long term only if it is not accompanied by improper non-inflationary, non-deficit creating policies.
I think Europe cannot proceed at the same pace of integration in all its areas, and it is normal that in some historical stages the integration of currencies goes faster than the integration of budgetary rules, or the market for goods and services, but we have to keep the fronts of the integration process more or less aligned in the medium term. That is why I do have sympathy for the notion cultivated by the German authorities of making progress in the actual sharing of complete policy instruments, somehow commeasured to the progress achieved in creating a proper institutional setup with sharing of sovereignity and it is so much better to voluntary share sovereignity in the context of the Union, then to have to submit a country to a less voluntary decision making by others, like happens to those countries that had agreed upon finally to live under the direction of a troika, which may be the best thing available in the circumstances, but is not certainly what encourages a population to be self-confident and responsible.
I must say that my effort in Italy, with my colleagues in the government and the Parliament, since day one, has been to fully try to convince the Italian public opinion that some discipline principles, yes demanded by the European Union, where not really imposed unilaterally and externally, but were really - and are - really in the longer term, interest of the Italians in the first place.
I hope that each national leadership does not play the game of Brussels passing which I saw so many times played when I had to work in Brussels and therefore I think it is important at the same time to create a frame for growth in Europe that will make the process of European integration to be perceived as something generating an improvement in welfare and wellbeing, which I believe will be the only path compatible with democracy, with democracy at the national level and with democracy at the European level, with an inhest rule for the European Parliament.
I believe we have also here one of the many important similarities that we have in our respective visions of Europe. So I hope to try and deserve in the future the honour that has been confirmed upon me today. And our German friends can rest assured that I will not forget the role of the German culture in shaping Europe, just as I’m sure that nobody in Germany forgets the role of the Italian culture in shaping Europe as well.
Thank you so much.
Fonte foto:
Flickr - ESMT European School of Management & Technology's photostream
