This year, Italy sent Giuseppe Valditara, Minister of Education and Services, a man of culture to the Davos International Forum, who, however, is not familiar with the topics of the event, which Thomas Mann deals with every year in the mountains. Last year, for example, there were four ministers in the Draghi government: Daniele Franco (economy), Roberto Cingolani (ecological transition), Vittorio Colao (technological innovation) and Enrico Giovannini (infrastructure): all who knew what they were saying.
Prime Ministers have also attended Davos in the past (most recently the neophyte Giuseppe Conte, immortalized with Jair Bolsonaro on this occasion). Instead, Giorgia Meloni declined the invitation, Giancarlo Giorgetti made firm commitments, but at least Gilberto Pichetto Fratin was able to go (but it was good for the country’s image that Matteo avoided Salvini), and that’s why it’s up to Valditara.
In a way it was to be expected. The Italian right, sovereign and soi disant, allergic to strong powers, hostile to globalization and, shall we say, modernity, even to the present, has always hated appointments like Davos, where it actually meets, as Meloni said years ago, “the globalist gotha”: go back, satan.
But contrary to her slogans, the prime minister’s right-wing populism clashes with the national interest in staying within a new paradigm that promotes greener and fairer global economic growth through the use of tools such as artificial intelligence, the new frontiers of science and medicine, clean energy, new labor practices . As we debate excise duties and POS here, the world marvels at what is being called a “new industrial revolution”.
What Meloni finds difficult to understand is that the right has emerged from its age of innocence and is now in power. He no longer attacks posters against the Americans and the Soviets, but remains in the Palazzo Chigi. This is an insurmountable reason to be present where the big issues of the planet are discussed.
On the other hand, Davos is not exactly a Mecca for business people. Yesterday Ursula von der Leyen gave a very important speech, and in these days Chancellor Olaf Sholz will be present, among others, while US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, who will speak in the plenary session, as well as dozens of entrepreneurs from around the world, in short, a forum that will not solve the problems of the planet but at least try to bring them into focus.
After the pandemic, the Davis 2023 Forum at least wants to untie the knot of how the global economy can be restarted not in ten years, but now and partly with new coordinates, from the environment to nutrition to digital communication.
Yesterday, it was said, the President of the European Commission delivered an innovative speech on the green economy, responding in many ways to Joe Biden’s bet and launching the idea of a green European sovereign wealth fund to support competition from the United States and China , which generously promotes its industrial plants in the energy transition: “We will propose a new NetZero Industry Act based on the model of the Chip Act,” said von der Leyen, with a view to the 43 billion euro plan for the European production of Crisps.
All in all, these are huge things. From reshaping world economic and manufacturing relations in a framework that risks marginalizing Europe in the pincer between the United States and China: it is essentially the subject of the issues of this 21st century.
Shrugging your shoulders with an extremist and provincial attitude does not help our country, it does not help Italian companies, it does not help the government itself, which not only isolates itself from major events but moves on as it did at the beginning of the twentieth century to seek the battle between the law firms of the European synthesis.
It is Italy’s logic that guides Giorgia Meloni, inspired not by a global vision but by populist arrogance. That’s why they send us Valditara.