Emilia Romagna EU committee, Enrico Letta presents priorities for the EU’s future

Brussels – The future of the European Union will depend on how it meets the challenges of the present and the completion of the single market. This is the message delivered today (June 26) by Enrico Letta, former Italian Prime Minister and current President of the Jacques Delors Institute, who presented his report on the single market at an event organized by the Emilia Romagna region’s Committee in the EU. Crucial in Letta’s vision is the birth of a single financial market that can attract and not disperse resources and the implementation of EU cohesion policies.

Enrico Letta has already submitted his report to the European Union, but today’s occasion clarified how this work can be a tool to inspire the building of the EU’s future. The presence among the audience of so many territorial entities (in addition to Emilia Romagna), research institutes, and small and medium-sized enterprises made Letta focus on the need to develop a new competitive financial market.

Letta recalled when, before he began drafting his own work, he met Jacques Delors, who urged him to: “Start again from the single market idea of 1985 and implement it for the 21st century.” The former Italian premier brought to attention how the freedom of movement in the EU has been unidirectional (south to north and east to west), and this has led to the imbalances we know today with areas where the cost of living has gone crazy, and others depopulated. To resolve this imbalance, we must strengthen cohesion policies and make all areas equally attractive. This is precisely why the moment is crucial; as Letta emphasizes, “We cannot make the same mistakes made so far by considering the problem marginally.” The challenge, for the President of the Jacques Delors Institute, must also be to manage to “De-Bruxelise the EU to avoid giving way to populists,” adding, “If the EU manages to be less vertical and bureaucratic in its decisions, and closer to small territorial entities, then the future of the Union will be prosperous.”

Great attention was also paid to the issue of the double transition: green and digital. Enrico Letta noted that within Europe, there are two diametrically opposed visions: “In some countries such as France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, both left and right believe in the need for a communitarian instrument to facilitate transitions, while in other states such as the Netherlands, Germany, and the Scandinavian ones there is bipartisan opposition to this idea.” Two different Europes with two different approaches then, but agreement and compromise is needed to stop the decline. Precisely in this regard Letta goes further by warning that “if a solution is not found the tractors will be only the first in a long line of workers protesting against EU decisions.”