A 116 billion exodus in the South: relaunch in six moves after the Pnrr

In the most dual country in Europe, the Pnrr has placed cohesion among the "transversal" objectives, common to all missions and interventions. And it has achieved more than one success, summarized in a growth rate of 8.5% cumulative between 2021 and 2024 while the Centre-North recorded +5.8%, employment rising from 42.7% to 50.2% thanks to approximately 500 thousand new people employed and an increase in investments more than double compared to the rest of the country.

Precisely here, however, one of the central challenges for "making the legacy of the Pnrr structural" comes into play, a theme placed at the center of the economic policy agenda in the Report on the "Levers of growth" edited by Roberto Garofoli with the support of the Anci (presented in the Sole 24 Ore on 25 September). The reason is simple: without the South, the objective of giving the country the adequate growth rates so as not to lose the thrust of the Plan becomes chimerical. And the three "levers" to do so, identified as supporting productivity, in the intertwining of social cohesion and economic health and in the modernization of institutions, require a tailor-made declination of a South that returns in an intensified form many of the country's structural deficits.

The mechanics of the Report is based on numbers to build proposals based on the detailed analysis of the phenomena. And the numbers, alongside the positive developments just mentioned, speak of 500 thousand graduates who have fled the South in 20 years, with an economic loss estimated at 116 billion euros; and of an exodus that continues, at the rate of 17 thousand southern students who enroll in universities in the Centre-North every year. The haemorrhage leaves an emaciated territory, which alongside islands of excellence is experiencing depopulation in 90% of the municipalities in the internal areas, losing students in schools at a rate more than double that of the North (-9% between 2017 and 2023), experiencing rates of precariousness double that of other areas of the country and limping in excellent healthcare (almost all 15 first-rate hospitals are elsewhere) as well as in basic prevention.

But the Pnrr shows that decline is not destiny. As long as he consolidates his lessons. The tools identified by the Report to consolidate the recovery of recent years look to the experience of the Plan. This is the case of the single SEZ, which has favored the activation of 11 billion in investments but now needs to focus on strategic supply chains in individual territories and on qualified human capital, to which it can offer opportunities to stay by strengthening the integration between businesses, ITS, universities and research. The same strategic imprint must mature in the "40% clause" on the funds, a label of the Pnrr which must now overcome its accounting connotation to be linked to the actual needs of the different areas of the South. A cohesion policy oriented towards selected common and verifiable objectives should then be developed on "essential levels of performance" (Lep) oriented towards performance and not just inputs (staff, funds, tools).

In this project, a framework law on logistics has the task of strengthening the backbone of this recovering body, giving certain times and concentrated powers to a single commissioner for high speed (Rome-Bari in 2 hours, Rome-Reggio Calabria in 3 hours, Naples-Taranto in 2 hours, Palermo-Catania in one hour) to be placed at the center of a logistics network to connect the internal areas. Coordinated tools, which work together towards the same objective: to create the foundations for a structural recovery of the South, and therefore of the country.