Graglia: “The country needs a constituent phase.”

“We need a constituent season.” According to Michele Graglia, this is an absolute priority. “In my life, I’ve seen war, but the effects of the crisis we’ve been going through are extremely serious. It isn’t just part of a cycle, but a phase of profound change. This is why the country needs new institutional rules, precise points that will help us to come out of a deadlock in which the minimum values of a civil and political society are no longer shared by the parties involved.”

His clear and direct words were directed at the world of politics which is so far from the real problems of the country. “I don’t want to be like the Mayor of Florence, but we need a trade-in for something and someone.”

The chairman of the industrialist association in Varese, UNIVA, intervened after the economic data for 2010 had been presented, which showed signs of “a selective and differentiated recovery”.

The growth rate in Italy is only half the average of other European countries. We are a long way behind what is happening in Germany. Graglia continued, “The feeling of inactivity, the feeling that nothing is changing and that nothing can change, is widespread, and it affects every aspect of life in the country. Politics, institutional reforms, taxation: all fronts, all situations in which change seems to be impossible. It’s the fault of a crisis that still has a hold on our economy. It’s the fault of politics that has closed in on itself, because of our difficulty to point the world of work in a direction that all groups in society can agree on.”

This is all the more worrying when we see how things are going in the rest of the world. As a country, Italy seems to be stationary, almost lost.

A situation like this is indeed worrying, although what is happening in Varese is, once more, quite different. According to Graglia, “the actual country is better than what it seems. Starting with Varese Province. We don’t have only a stationary country. Restricting ourselves to this view would be wrong and misleading. Our region is able to provide a new model of development, with real examples that can avoid the dangers of inactivity that appears to be seeping into the country like glue. Varese has five points of excellence: ‘The pride to operate alone’, ‘A concrete approach’, ‘Knowledge as a factor of development’, ‘The potential to attract investments’, ‘A vision’.”

Malpensa is the first example. After “the short-sighted decision by Alitalia to leave”, the airport has risen through the ranks, a sign “that, no matter what the government decides, no matter what Roberto Colaninno, the chairman of Alitalia, decides, the market chooses our airport when it flies.” Without beating around the bush, Graglia also said, “In the end, it was good that that was what happened; Alitalia is going to end up in the hands of the French.”

The second positive point is the consultation between the companies and the workers. Fifty five company agreements have been reached, a sign of the good relations between unions and companies.

The university and the best relations with the school are the region’s third strength. Over the last few years, the university LIUC has made numerous agreements with manufacturing industry. “Thanks to these collaborations, the university has become a strategic partner for high-level training, designed on a company scale, capable of adapting to the various situations in companies and sectors.” On the school front, Graglia said, “The challenge that we set ourselves in the region was, in practice, to reach the minds of young people, by providing more innovative training in schools. This is one objective that we can achieve, by means of the opportunities introduced with the recent school reform, which allows school institutes to include a number of lessons planned autonomously, in addition to the general teaching programmes.”

The ability to attract investments emerges from the analysis of the social make-up of many businesses, where the presence of foreign employees is significant. And last but not least, we have a strategy that seeks to bring to the provincial negotiation table the prospects for Varese in 2020.

“Our province has achieved these results thanks to the solidarity and concrete nature of the manufacturing sector. I don’t think that there’s an alternative economic model to this one, today, and the data demonstrates this.”

Graglia is concerned, but also hopeful. “The crisis is leaving behind knowledge and abilities, with increased unemployment and companies that have closed. But the examples that we find in Varese may provide the key to escaping the situation of inactivity that the country has been forced into. This is thanks to the ability of everyone in the region, including the businessmen, to look ahead, to new projects, to new ideas, and to look beyond, which is what is happening in the markets. However, in order to continue to be successful and competitive, we must give hope to young people, to businesses, to their owners and to their collaborators. And this will only happen by planning the future. This is what Varese is already doing.”