Growth, happiness and wellbeing: what are we trying to achieve?
Incorpora video
Growth, happiness and wellbeing: what are we trying to achieve?
Economic growth is assumed to be good for human wellbeing; and the case made for free markets is often that they will maximize growth. But recent research into determinants of human happiness questions whether growth should be the objective; and free markets in finance have clearly not delivered even the growth benefits promised. Adair Turner’s lecture will explore what economics can tell us both about desirable social objectives and about the means by which we pursue them. It will argue that while growth itself is not the primary objective, it is a likely result of other desirable aims, such as economic freedom. That alternative justification has, however, profound implications for important aspects of public policy.
this interesting meeting on the last day of the festival of economics in Toronto and this is the moment when we address what has not worked in the economic mechanism of the past years yesterday it was very interesting for me to follow the roundtables in the afternoon we addressed issues in Italy in Greece social public spending and also an analysis unfortunately I would say harder to be made of this difficult moment and this was done by Soros in relation to the euro and the need for solidarity in Europe we also run the risk that the euro encounter is a very severe crisis unless we act promptly I must say that it was very interesting for me as well that you listen to a number of experts including Kotlikoff and Mito who provided us with a very detailed in the gloomy analysis of the public debt in the United States of the welfare system in a even in a country which apparently is not having the major problems that we have in Europe at present what we will seek to do today is to make a step forward or more of course it is not so that we can simply refrain from considering everyday problems that is for sure and yet we will make an attempt in doing something different today and you see yesterday evening we had a roundtable out of the Santa auditorium and assorted to understand what we could correct in the economic paradigm we wondered whether the economic system that we went for is sustainable and what type of economic growth should we pursue over the past years there was an intense debate among economists and politicians as well about the economics of happiness which is an expression by which we try and indicate the fact that the GDP and the growth of income at the development of infrastructures not always are a panacea for all evils and problems there are elements education the broadness of the environment in a society social cohabitation family cohesion so all other problems that have to be addressed and oftentimes these problems were addressed also with a view to justify the in capability of being productive and being capable of growing so it is not so that always we had intellectual honesty and we must say that honestly and sincerely I believe that in our country where we have a very high debt and yet this also applies to a number of additional states well I think that in our situation when considering agrees we should think of what quality will want to have behind growth we cannot deny of course of the value of growth per se recently this was also addressed at the United Nations that the General Assembly talks about Bhutan and honored the what Putin added because Putin which is a tiny country years ago already talked about this including in the measurement of the wealth of the country all the aspects that I mentioned so this is one thing but then we have the problems of unemployment of the debt which is there and which has to be repaid and the problems have fortunately possessed so we have today two very important speakers not only for their roles they but also based on their past experience in their career other Lord Itano dear Tana is the chairman of the Financial Service Authority at present and he's also a member of the House of Lords so he has a very solid experience also political experience and he is also a member jaren of the climate change committee in the UK which means that he has really a lot of knowledge of also the environmental aspect and the impact of climate change and then we have a Corrado pastor envoy the Minister for Economic Development infrastructures and transport he boasts a very solid experience in the public and private sector as well he worked with mondadori Olivetti chair it was a banker with banking tazer he was the chief of the Italian pasta service which is a public service that we all use so certainly they both have a very diversified experience and background at the aterna is certainly a person who has also a critical and skeptical view of financial markets he has been appointed a chairman of the FSA five days my brother is a so he was colder to tackle an emergency that was spreading from the United States or to the rest of the world so I would like to give the floor now to Adair Turner who will address us on all these aspects with reference to development so you have the floor thank you very much indeed and it's a great pleasure to be here at this Trento festival of economics until lunchtime yesterday over Friday and Saturday morning I was in a meeting with central bank governors with with Mario Draghi with people from America with fellow regulators and we were discussing the present state of the eurozone and the global economy and it will not surprise you that it wasn't a very cheery meeting there was a considerable set of concern about the global economy and when I was leaving the meeting I mentioned to several of my my fellow colleagues from around the world that I was heading off to go to a delightful Italian town to attend the Trento festival of economics and I have to say there was bewilderment on most people's faces when I told them that and one of my colleagues said festival economics the these are these are two words which are very rarely heard in the same sentence indeed I think they would have been even more bewildered if they'd known that I was going to speak in a Teatro I looking out I rather feel you're expecting me to sing rather than give an economics lecture economics was once called the dismal science and I think particularly across Europe at the moment if we were to ask the ordinary citizens what they think of economists they would think that economists are the people who have demands for austerity the need to tighten our belts who tell us that we must live within our means and of course it is true that at the core of the intellectual discipline of economics is the proposition of choice within constraints the idea that there have to be trade-offs trade-offs between consumption now and consumption later trade-offs between taxes and public expenditure trade-offs individually between whether you spend your money on product a or product B but I think it's also important in the sunshine of this festival to remember that economics is about the choices as well as the constraints about the possibilities of technological progress which is the fundamental driver of economic growth and about how societies choose to enjoy the fruits of that technological progress and therefore I think it's essential for economics as a discipline sometimes to explore not just the constraints and not just the means of the methods of economic policy but also the objectives themselves what we are trying to achieve and that is why the title for my talk this evening which is in the program is what are we trying to achieve and I think that's particularly important for us to go back to the fundamentals of economics both as regards objectives and as regards means in the wake in the aftermath of the economic crisis and that's why my recent book is entitled economics after the crisis objectives and means and I'll try in my comments this morning to summarize some of the ideas in that book but it will only be a very brief summary so that that will mean that of course to get all of the ideas you'll have to go and buy the book which is of course my overt and selfish purpose in talking to you this morning I think before the crisis economics before the crisis both as an economic discipline and in its translation into economic and social policy was dominated by a very self-confident conventional wisdom economics before the crisis was very certain or of itself and it thought it knew let us say four key propositions the first was that the objective of economics was the growth of the economy both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in election campaigns used the phrase it's the economy stupid that the aim is economic growth and from that there was a tendency to derive a justification for markets and for the liberalisation and markets which was an instrumental justification a justification according to the objectives that had achieved that markets were justified because they delivered more growth than planned economies the second proposition was that the freer markets were the more you would get economic growth and that market liberalisation worked in all sectors of the economy in product markets in labor markets but also crucially in financial markets there was a very strong proposition that the development of financial markets of financial innovation would improve the efficiency of the global economy and would make the global economy more stable thirdly there was a justification of inequality which was instrumental that the reason why a large and indeed widening level of inequality in the rich developed economies was acceptable was that inequality provided incentives to drive growth which was good for human welfare so it was an instrumental justification of inequality and fourth there was a very strong tendency in economics to focus on microeconomics indeed there was a confidence in many parts that we had solved the problems of macroeconomics lowers a statement that the world was in what was called a Great Moderation in which we had controlled inflation the variability the standard deviation of both inflation and growth had reduced compared with the 1960s and 70s and 80s a lot of the big macro economic fluctuations had reduced and both economics in its intellectual discipline and in its in application was focused on microeconomics there was a lot of focus within the discipline of economics of saying we now had to understand the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics and an assertion that the key problems of economic policy were not the stability of the system because that seemed now assured but the micro economics which would drive that greater growth now I believe that each of these propositions is either wrong or hugely overstated and I believe that it is very important for economics as a discipline after this extraordinary financial crash to go back to the basics and make sure that it is thought about which of these propositions are true which are partially true which are quite wrong and so what I'm going to do this morning is talk about some of these propositions I'll talk a bit about proposition one about growth about proposition two about financial markets I'm not going to talk about inequality simply because I don't have time but of course that means you'll have to buy the book to read my comments on inequality and then I will make a comment on macroeconomics and microeconomics and in that bid I'll try and make the link to away from this philosophical point of view to the day-to-day problems with which I struggle and also with which Corrado is struggling in dealing with the present situation so first long on the objectives of economic activity it seems obvious to many people that what we should be trying to do is grow the economy and the proposition seems obvious that as we increase the economy social well-being life satisfaction people's happiness will increase but actually if you go back to the fundamentals it is not clear to what extent that is the case increasingly over the last 20 years a group of economists and social researchers have said well let us test that proposition let us see what we know about whether people in richer societies are happier than people in poorer societies let us see whether it is the case that steadily over time measures of life satisfaction appear to be increasing now like all good things in economics there are intense academic debates about the facts economics would not be an intellectual discipline unless academics were able to disagree about the facts then there are different schools of thought that disagree with one another but my interpretation having looked at the literature is that there is a reasonable point of view which goes as follows it is clearly very important for human life satisfaction for social well-being for human happiness that one makes the progress from the standard of living of China today to something like Western standards of living over that range of GDP per capita it makes a lot of difference it is even more that continents like Africa would still have GDP per capita of $1,000 a day at least make the progress to Chinese levels and then on to European and American levels but it seems the case that from about the standard of living which was achieved by the rich developed countries in about 1970 to 1980 it is not certain whether further progress in measured prosperity prosperity measured by national income accounting measures of GDP whether it fundamentally drives greater social satisfaction and improvement in human welfare you can debate it you can either say that the correlation has weakened or you can say that the correlation is uncertain some would say the correlation is not there at all I would not go that far I think growth still matters to a degree but it is uncertain and it is weaker and I think we understand at least four reasons why that might be the case first it is the case that as we get richer an increasing proportion of our consumption is devoted to forms of consumption where we get satisfaction not for the absolute form of the absolute benefit of what we are buying but precisely because it signals that we are richer than the person next door if you think a lot a lot of the expenditure on brand or fashion items the whole purpose is to prove that you are ahead of the crowd now that's a part of human nature we mustn't disparage that people want to do that but it does mean that as we get richer we can't all get richer than the person next door the relative distribution of income is unaffected by us all getting richer the second point is that in terms of absolute ly important factors it must be the case that utility is subject as economists suggests to diminishing marginal utility basically one winter coat keeps you warm two winter coats give you the second order buzz of fashion which may be important but is less important than being warm broadly speaking there is a limit to the number of washing machines that people want to own for me the limit is one there is no particular benefit in having two or three or four washing machines thirdly there are some items where not only do we have to have a higher income than the person next door a higher relative income in order to be ahead of the crowd in terms of relative status but we need it in order to actually be able to enjoy a higher standard in itself let me try and explain that if you want to know what determines whether you are able to stay at the nice hotel by the beach or the hotel in the skiing resort which is close to the piste rather than a long way away the average income of all people makes no difference the only thing that matters is your income relative to other people because you are involved in a relative income competition for things which are in absolute limited supply and actually it turns out that one of the most important things that we devote our income to as we get richer which is housing essentially there are limits to how many lovely houses in lovely locations everybody can have and therefore we are in a competition for relative status finally the fourth factor it is the fact that as we get richer the very facts of getting richer in some ways degrades the quality of life the richer we are and the more people can go to the beach or the skiing holiday the more crowded it is in some senses driving along a country road in Italy or a Britain in the 1950s was a more pleasant experience than it is today the roads were less crowded and interestingly most automobile advertisements on television are selling you a product that you will never actually enjoy most automobile car advertisements in Britain are clearly filmed at about 4:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning in Scotland or Scandinavia where you are charging along this open road you then buy the car and you sit bumper-to-bumper behind the car in front so you take all these factors diminishing marginal utility competition for relative status in branded goods and fashion Goods competition for limited supply goods environmental and congestion degradation and it is not surprising as a result that as we get richer beyond a certain point the correlation between yet further increase in income and measures of satisfaction at least becomes if not zero less certain than when you are making the transition from a life of absolute poverty to one in which you have at least a reasonable house good food warm in winter and a some leisure time the transition from African standards of living to America to European standards of living so my first point is at the foundation of the what I call the instrumental conventional wisdom at the foundation of it in terms of objectives there is a much greater degree of uncertainty than economics has pretended the second proposition is that if we do want to get rich the crucial way forward is through market liberalisation that the free other markets that you have the more rapid the rate of growth now the second chapter of my book addresses that proposition and of course there are elements of that proposition which are right if you broadly had to choose between a market economy and a planned economy a Soviet economy the empirical historical record gives us no doubt of which way you should vote the planned economies of the Soviet Union although they produced an initial spurt of production in heavy industrial goods turned out to be completely useless at delivering let us say the standard of living of the developed Europe of today and there are a set of reasons why that was the case so the fundamental proposition in favor of the market economy is a good one but we need to be very careful of extending that to the proposition that we therefore know that every single market should be as liberalized as possible and it turns out that one of the key insights about markets we can derive from Tolstoy Tolstoy of course not known as one of the world's premier economists but if we use Paul Krugman to translate from an insight from Tolstoy we can derive something interesting about markets the opening line of Tolstoy is great novel Anna Karenina is all happy families are happy in the same way all unhappy families are unhappy in their own particular way and Paul Krugman whom I think has spoken at this festival on several occasions has turned that into the wonderful economic insight all perfect markets are perfect in their own way all imperfect markets are imperfect all all perfect markets are perfect in the same way all imperfect markets are imperfect in their own particular way and it turns out that when you get beyond first-year economics to second year economics you understand that all markets are imperfect but the degree of imperfection matters broadly speaking the market for restaurants works if we want to have a supply of restaurants which excites us with different menus different ambience which has a high level of incentive on the owner and the work the waiters there and the cooks to provide good service there is nothing better than a completely free market which creates an incentive a thousand flowers bloom some of them wilt some of them are successful we end up with good restaurants and if you don't believe that then you never visited a restaurant in the Soviet bloc before the iron curtain came down but when you then translate that to financial markets it turns out that that logic doesn't apply that financial markets are very different from the market for restaurants and crucially an insight and insight which is in Cannes in franc night in hyman minsky in many of the great macro economists what financial markets do is not simply clear in the present time period they have to link the present to the future under conditions of inherent irreducible uncertainty one of the great foundation articles of economics is an article by the British economist Frank Knight which draws a distinction between mathematically model risk and inherent irreducible uncertainty seems quite a technical distinction but it's a vital one from the but from that follows the fact that markets in financial contracts will never be as perfect as suggested by economists they will always be subject to uncertainty they will always be subject to several self-referential cycles they will always be potentially subject to herd effects and instability of the thought which George Soros was describing yesterday when he talked about his concepts of reflexivity we need to understand the very specificity of financial market and we failed to do that before the crisis before the crisis it really is quite humbling for economists to read some of the things which were said about financial markets at that period in the IMF's global financial stability review of April 2006 you will find a statement and I'm quoting it from memory but I it's in the book but I will get it roughly right it says something to the effect of it is widely recognized that the developments of markets in credit derivatives and securitized products has created a financial markets in which risk is more efficiently distributed it therefore has created a more resilient and stable system in which the likelihood of the failure of commercial banks is greatly reduced now that was written and published by the IMF in April 2006 15 months before the onset of the biggest financial crisis in the last 200 years and that is a sign of how wrong economics got it so on financial markets we got it completely wrong we are not certain that free financial markets produce efficient results it doesn't mean we want a planned economy of financial markets and banks I think that would be worse but it does mean we have to very carefully regulate and control financial markets and we must be aware of their potential instabilities so I've questioned two fundamental propositions of the pre market conventional wisdom I've questioned whether we really philosophically do believe that growth should be the ultimate objective of all economic activity and I've questioned whether free financial markets or free markets is always the axiomatically correct answer so where does that leave me does that leave me in a sort of radical green a gala terian space-like mr. sales latouche who will talk this afternoon who argues that we should build a society of deceleration and reject the whole idea of growth in the economy well actually it doesn't and the reason why it doesn't is that I think there is a justification a philosophical justification for markets which has nothing really to do or little to do with the instrumental end result of markets which is growth but is a justification in and of itself and it is a justification which interestingly was to the fore in the initial theoreticians of the market economy people like Adam Smith Jeremy Bentham John Stuart Mill David Ricardo when they talked about the benefits of the market economy they fundamentally rooted it in the concept of individual freedom to make their own choices rather than in the instrumental benefits of a faster rate of economic growth and I think that more fundamental argument is really important and it's an idea which Amartya Sen has put forward in his book development as freedom Sen asked the interesting question suppose that contrary to hi-hi X greater precision that a Soviet planned economy without the use of the price signal would never be as efficient as a market economy in delivering prosperity suppose that was not true suppose it had turned out that a Soviet economy of planned labour directed labour directed consumption had been as efficient as the Western European economies in developing prosperity would that be an equally desirable outcome and the answer Amartya Sen is surely no because as he says and I quote the freedom of people to act they like in deciding where to work what to produce and what to consume is and of itself an important aspect of freedom as a Martius n writes and I quote the merit of the market does not lie only in its capacity to generate more efficient culmination outcomes but in the processes by which those outcomes are achieved and I believe that increasingly in the rich developed world we should see further economic growth not as the all-consuming objective which we have to continually pursue but as the likely byproduct of an economic freedom which is desirable in itself but if you define that as the the way round the objectives work freedom as the start point from which growth follows rather than growth as the objective from which the case for economic freedom is instrumentally derived actually you end up with a set of different points of view on a whole number of public policy issues and those I describe in my third chapter but let me now try and link what I've said to the day problems of both Corrado and I because at one level this seems bizarre that I am sitting here and saying we're a rich developed society we don't need to worry about growth and corrado is sitting there saying how on earth do we deliver growth to deal with the debt overhang problem that we have in Italy to make sure that we deliver full employment is there a contradiction between what I have said well I don't think there is and here's why first the very same empirical analysis on human utility welfare and happiness which says that it is not necessarily important that we drive evermore increases in average GDP per capita that very same analysis both empirical and theoretical of the nature of human choices tells us that it is incredibly important to human welfare that we do not suffer a loss of levels of standard of living already achieved people much more highly value the already achieved last increment of standard of living than further increments looking forward in mathematical terms the shape of the marginal utility preference is not smooth it is it is kinked it is it is a non smooth curve it matters hugely that we do not suffer setbacks to European standards of living and if we suffer those setbacks we could spin into forms of political instability which would take us back from what we have achieved in the UK in Europe across the last 50 years secondly it is incredibly important that you have something approaching full employment because again that same analysis that says that human beings are not necessarily interested do not necessarily value evermore increments in average standard of living suggests that employment is very important because employment is not just a means to money it is a form of participation in society the loss of which involves a deep loss of status and of a sense of well-being and of self esteem and if we have freedom to innovate and to produce productivity we have to have growth not because it's going to make us happy but to deliver a reasonable full employment economy what comes from that actually is a very important thing for us to remember full of future which is that I believe that is a natural byproduct of economic freedom we will have growth I do not believe we should maximize it but I do believe we should make it as steady as possible I believe the macro economics of achieving steady growth are hugely important I think unsteady growth which produces spurts of growth and setbacks to growth already achieved full employment and then unemployment I think that is very bad for human welfare so if I had to choose over the long term looking forward over 50 years between growth of 1.8% per capita per annum which was steady and 2% which was in spurts and then declines everything we know about human welfare says go for the first but that's not what we were told by economics before the crisis indeed we were told that it was worthwhile taking instability risks in financial innovation because it would help squeeze out the last little increment of efficiency we need to have a great favoritism for stability of growth for gradual growth over the last bit of maximization but finally if you have gone through a process where you have ended up with a high level of debt debt which was only affordable on the assumption of future growth then you have now got to deliver that future growth one of the things when you can you create a high level of of debt whether it be private debt or public debt is that you do then have to grow in order to in void in order to service that debt and avoid the instabilities which will occur if that debt defaults so yes from the present position of where Europe ears I think it is very important that we find a growth path out over the next four or five or ten years I'm simply asking some questions about how important it is to maximize growth over the very long term and that does have some implications about the type of growth that we need it means that for instance as Nick Stern pointed out in his book on the economics of climate change if we need sustainable growth in climate change terms it is perfectly OK in human welfare terms to sacrifice the last increment of long term growth it means that in macroeconomic terms we should place a very strong focus on sustainable growth which has to mean growth with less debt than the past both with less debt in both a private and a public sense which is what we are trying to achieve with our reform of the financial system the huge tragedy of our present position is that we allowed debt to grow so much in the past that we can only now get out of it with a growth from our present position we have to achieve that transition that requires very careful thinking both about the macro economics of demand and about some of the micro economic reforms with which Corrado is heavy is deeply involved so I don't think there is any conflict between that short term priority and the fundamental questions that I am raising about the overall objectives and means of economics over the long term thank you very much perfetto okay they found that a jacket the other perfect thank you because you already basically launched the contribution by Minister Paz Sarah because obviously this crisis also makes us reexamine the growth and development issues and the way we interpreted them until now and she review consumerism the consumerism we had in the past decades in the 50s we drove more happily on roads and yet I'm old enough to remember that I was queuing up already then in Rome but anyway leaving that aside it is true that from an environmental viewpoint and from the viewpoint of the sustainability of sustainability changes have been fundamental for a time I was in the United States and so you see often I do not know exactly what happens in Italy but I've been told that in Italy traffic has improved over the past months there is less congestion on the road and that is good but the reason behind that is not good because it means that people cannot afford to buy petrol so this of course tells about a very gloomy picture and a blow to family dramatic situations where people cannot again afford purchasing what they need and will have now ministers who have a difficult task of again bring life to the into this gloomy picture well certainly it is a difficult task and hope I hope I'm going to say interesting things that you will tell me you said earlier on that some people were surprised at hearing that I would participate in a festival of economics and that I would speak in a theater well you see year after year this festival testifies to the fact that there is a really a widespread will and desire to address issues issues pertaining to the economy and the style of this festival is good because it is very open and it brings together different ideas and this is the formula which makes this festival so successful because it is true that the topics her might be sort of stranger for a broad audience but apparently it is not so because people do participate do attend the events and that is good you see I've always agreed with what the year said in the past and says today as well you see some years ago it was not obvious to say the things we are saying today here and we were laughed at when we said the very same things that now we talk about the Europe talked about the fundamentals also the philosophic assumption behind our a number of assertions I will not of course repeat what he said but I would add a few remarks because one of the major reasons behind the crisis that were had in the anglo-saxon world and then the rest of the world wasn't real economy also include under problems that pertain to the understanding of the fundamentals in that many of the rules that are proved to be insufficient or controls that were insufficient derived from absoluta dogmas of which we're a market heads towards equilibrium market prices are always difficult consumers and investors behave always in a rational way with the directives you can reduce risk even down to zero all these things were not actually evidenced and could not be and they led to an excess in the situation also lack of control in a number of countries and they also led into cos to mistake and policies and this brought us to the crisis into a crisis and behind many of these rules you also have an assumption that was mentioned by my friends are they early on that is the fact that society almost equals economy and that economy only responds to rules of rationality competition among different stakeholders and magically that magically the common good would derive from this situation we have always known that it was not so it was not easy to say that clearly earlier on now it is easier because we have some evidence and society is much more than it second all economy and it is not only that we have a different interest that hold together a society but sharing is at the basis of a society and if you do not have that then things happen as they did happen and the weaker pay the highest price growth probably the conclusion of the book by either year turner that in the long term when you have overcome a certain level of widespread well growth is not so relevant well we are north in that reality we are a reality that has moved away from that situation we are in a situation in Europe were probably 50 million people either are unemployed or are underemployed 50 million people and so you understand that that has a huge impact because if you think of their family it means 200 million people and if you put together unemployed people those who are not seeking for our job but the underemployed and those who receive redundancy pay and those who work but do not earn enough to plan of their future so we would bring all these people together we have five seven million people consider the families so we move up to 28 million people more or less which means half of the Italian population that is we are in a situation which is very very far from a conquered sufficient growth rather we talk of a situation where due to the fact that there was not growth enough that is the situation that we achieved and I can tell you this as I say that would entirety and given my task and my role I can really tell you that I ask myself every day what I can put in my agenda for growth and it will go back to that later on you asked what growth do we have to strive for given the lessons that we had to learn over the past well you talked about sustainability and correctly so I would like to talk about sustained growth which means that we need a level of growth which is sufficient to create jobs that is our objective we have to have a growth enough to create jobs to have work and move towards a full employment situation which we are very distant from and that goes in general for Italy and specifically for some areas in Italy but I would say it is general also for Europe so we need sustained growth the sustainability is not a vague term it is a very concrete one and it means that it is not doped by the debt because the GDP does not take into account of the way by which growth is created because if you create growth by pumping the public debt or private debt in an excessive way that is not sustainable growth and indeed we know what problems that entails and this is also the reason why we first made order in public accounts asking Italians for sacrifices and from now on will work on structural elements take into account the constraints and limits of public finance that actually we find in the concept of debt but there is also private debt this is a corporate debt family debt so we bring everything together easily is not worse in a worse situation than other countries it is sustainable that debt but in public debt is very high it is sustainable under certain conditions but indeed we do have a problem in Europe at large if it consolidates if we imagine for a moment to be really a federation of state has a Europe at large has sustainable debt and we should remember that when talking about Europe in order to have sustainability we should not have doping effect by the debt in order to be sustainable growth it should not destroy common assets being the environment first and foremost and then intergeneration relations and all the other things we know and the sustainable browser should not bring about inequalities and indeed other year turner in this book explains very well that inequality is highly disruptive and is very limiting of social cohesion and social cohesion in instead is one of the fundamental levers of sustainable growth over time we all know that inequality has to be fought against we have to reduce it by working on welfare and by welfare I mean the needs or the needs of people education care and taking care of new types of poverty but that means also having a correct and equilibrated taxation system a system in which everybody pays taxes and a system in which meritocracy is key there is no chance that we have all these things work unless we have the resources and to growth and that means both jobs and the management of inequalities well you see sometimes we tend to focus on these problems in an unbalanced way but the book by idea is very balanced in considering all these things we know that it is not sufficient to have a low inequality levels to be a community to be a people to be a positive people happy is perhaps an excessive word but if you are afraid of the future because you do not have a vision for the future if you do not have a shared vision for the future then you are concerned perhaps sir you enjoy more wealth or a higher level of wealth but you do not have serenity you do not have well-being as adiyae Etana will rise in his book and indeed we have gone through different times in our history moments of inequality but there was energy because there was a plan on a design because there was a project because people felt part of a project during the reconstruction of the country or a moment when we had to react together two common problems the fact of joining efforts and being part of a common project health compensating for many other objective shortages and deficiencies and now I would like to talk about growth before we take questions and additional comments why an agenda for growth well you see the big effort that we sought to make from the very beginning with the Monti government it's aligned with the need to reduce the unemployment we have today and create of the conditions to have new jobs so to create new jobs so there is no other reason behind this agenda this is our priority number one and those 67 million Italians that today are concerns about the future due to the lack of work and jobs are addressed under this agenda through this agenda so you see there is a frustration the element though because when I talk about the agenda I'm always asked tell me two three things that can again push the economy forward otherwise I don't know what to write in the newspaper well you see unfortunately it's not so simple it is not so that there is one initiative that can start the economy again we have to consider each and every element and each and every reason why our country is not growing and we have to work on each one of them so the agenda for growth is complex it is also boring I admit it but we must know that the reason why we did not grow over the past 15 years is that we went for shortcuts we went for a silver bullet or we tried to get to a silver bullet or to win an electoral campaign to make a hot title in the newspaper without solving all the basic funny and fundamental problems and addressing all the opportunities too that were there and I will be of course brief because I cannot recover each and every element in the agenda but to have an idea I want to give you an idea of what has been done for the past months because that has an important impact on the economy well first we have to ask ourselves so whether a country like Italy can grow in the framework of globalization I'm convinced the globalization can be an opportunity for Italy and we have an increase in exports a 2-digit increase even in these difficult times and this is also evidenced by the fact that all over the world there are hundreds of millions of potential new consumers for Italian products in sectors where Italy is strong already and that includes automation and industrial product and we are world leaders together with Germany in that the improvement in the standard of living in many parts of the world and taint the Italian fashion Italian food and many other Italian items let's say are desired for and there is a boom also in tourism and then there are the services where Italy is very strong and where we can sell what we are already good at which means that we are part of the globalization process and we can benefit from it and we should not consider the opening of the markets as a threat only rather it should be seen as a spur to move on and conquer new markets we finance exports and initiatives for Institute's favoring Italian trade we do a number of things to favor businesses abroad 14 billion euro were allocated for businesses that raise capital to be strong enough er to operate also abroad and that was the first thing we did at the beginning we could have said well we want to save on everything but we did not because we decided to invest immediately resources in what really could mean growth for our country and then we also sought her for Salta to achieve solutions for growth in the country because it is true that there are markets where competition is not a the key rule of the game and thinking of some services and care and that is certainly true but there are also other markets where competition can indeed serve as an opportunity the fact of opening up the gas supply market which was unthinkable until some years ago and the fact that we opened the public transport a market which serves a 2030 million people every day where we will really have room for real competition and improvement of services went in this direction and I could list other examples all this is also part of that strategy I talked about we have to make room for new growth first and foremost and then obviously it is not so that we should only go for a medium-term reforms we have also to inject resources into an economy where resources are deficient I think of the credit problem for many businesses and in our program we have also a fund guarantee fund of 20 million euro for SMEs so that was also unprecedented but we did that in economy will have resources that have to be found again there are unpaid invoices that are it's really for public administration that hard to be collected and paid and this is what we do with the payment directive so overdue payment is what we are focusing on to again trigger a an improvement putting money into the economy also means starting again as fast as possible a number of projects also minor projects that had been blocked in Italy due to bureaucracy or due to lack of resources and I'm thinking of 100 building yards that we have again opened for infrastructure building they were chosen based on the effective needs of the communities and of the districts and their need to gain access to the European markets in a better way so these are resources that are deployed on the territory and they also improve the competition and competitiveness of our country and we know that competitiveness comes from innovation hence are the incentives that we will give and as soon as we'll have more resources we will try and find easier mechanisms to finance innovation innovation includes start-ups this is a country that historic has not helped them that much but we have put together a group of really skilled people who is working who is working on that so that before the summer we will make a series of proposals to facilitate startups and of course we welcome suggestions then there is also the issue of simplification plying our system we are partly overburdened but by a huge series of rules and lengthy lesson making processes so that everything is so difficult and that means that we will have to make a very thorough analysis of all the institutional levels and the levels that should not be there and the all the situations where everybody enjoys a veto right and nobody is responsible for the final decision-making with no time schedule of course we will need a time to do that and this is a task which will be not completed in the time period that our government has I would also like to mention of the justice systems because you see this is also one of the reasons why we do not attract foreign investment and I think of the tribunal of businesses and of the fact of shortening the duration of trials court trials and then corruption and criminality and everything that has to do with illegality and the fight against the legality so that of course is part of the agenda for growth and then the energy policy we have no time to speak about that but this is just to tell you that growth comes from all these drivers and of course a social cohesion is one of the most important drivers and then dynamism while we set up the authority of transpose so dynamism social cohesion efficiency of education of justice and then a competitivity of the companies in all areas and this to tackle all the weak points now resources where they come from they should come from the cost reduction of public administration and then implementation of more stringent anti tax evasion rules and then we will have to try and sell public assets in the case of extraordinary initiatives and all this should be done hand-in-hand launch of resources and implementation and the promotion of growth and all this without increase in the deficit we cannot have deficit spending activities we avoided the risky situation of Greece and we avoided that slip and we had the immediate support of the Parliament we had the support of the companies and abroad they were really impressed by our ability to get together after periods of stock and divisions I like to close and say that all the chapters of our agenda for growth are open chapters that we have ideas but we set up working groups which are open to receive as suggestions for example we as a type of working group for the building yards and there is maximum transparency and there is the willingness to will to listen to suggestions there is no easy recipe for growth but growth today is a moral obligation in order to tackle the problem of unemployment which today is the number one priority thank you Thank You Minister I have a lot of questions but I don't want to take away the floor from the questions from the public from the audience and so I'll limit myself just to a couple of questions or one and a half questions because with two such people to such guests it is really a pity to not to speak about the role of bankers in the crisis but this would mean to open a new debate so I tried to stick to the title now a question for both speakers and we have the Minister for infrastructure and we have a person here who is in charge of the monitoring of the financial system but he's also the chairman of the change climate committee in Great Britain we know that that committee was very influential at a world level in the area of the environment now I'd like to ask you to which extent investment policies in energy environment fight against co2 emissions apart from being useful in terms of life do you think that these investments that can give a contribution to tackling the problem of unemployment because I'm a bit disappointed because I live in the US a four years ago Obama became president with a lot of promises and one of the most important promise that was that of creating some millions of jobs by greener technologies by means of green technologies but today a few months from the new elections the Silicon Valley which should have become a Green Valley but it has remained a Silicon Valley with a very few new green technology and the solar panels initiative ended up in a scandal and the company went bankrupt although receiving public funds public ransom and the electric car which was the symbol of that campaign it was very much advertised and also supported by public funds and this year it has been appointed as the car of the year it is called unpair in Europe it was called Walter in America but they had to they had to close the production because it's been a big failure a flop so I'm asking you to which extent investments in environmental initiatives can be a solution to the employment crisis and then a second question above all for other year Turner and it is a bit of the topic but it is something that I'm really interested in personally and I'm sure that it interests also many people here skepticism about the euro euro scepticism do you think that it was a mistake for Italy to join the euro yesterday there was a debate between for narrow and student other year was a person who participated in the UK debate when they had to decide whether to join the euro or not and Great Britain is a country which has kept its monetary sovereignty they have the pounder the Sterling pound and they have full space for making policies that we are done also in Italy in the past the devaluation printing money and the Bank of England has printed much more serling pounds than the BCE and Great Britain has public debt which is due to the financial crisis as well so I wanted to ask you about this issue of the euro well we know that it is impossible to exit the Euro but you think that exiting the Euro would be a feasible choice and possible choice or whether it would be a mistake what do you think oh just briefly comment on your first question on a green investment as you said in addition to being chairman of the Financial Services Authority I have been chairman of the UK's climate change committee and I certainly think there are huge opportunities business opportunities in the area of green technology and I don't think that what has happened in the solar photovoltaic space should in any way depress us what has happened in solar photovoltaics is actually extremely good news which is that the price of solar photovoltaics is collapsing because the technology is moving far faster than we anticipated and one of the processes that you get with new technologies is what the great economist Schumpeter called creative destruction where the a people dive into a new technology the technology then collapses in price in a way which is hugely valuable for the long-term economy and the long term a dealing with climate change but we're individual firms find it difficult to navigate through that incredibly collapse in price so I don't think we should treat that as being you know it's something that you simply have to expect it's what happened in railroads I mean the 19th century Britain 19th century America period of hugely creative development of the railroads but lots of railroad companies went bankrupt that simply happens in periods of what as I say should have called our creative destruction um can it create jobs um some of these technologies are quite capital intensive if you build a new nuclear power stations as we think we should in the UK once they are they are labor intensive in the construction but once operating their capital intensive rather than labor intensive on the other hand there are many things relevant to the green economy which are very labor intensive less important for you than for us though perhaps still important in bits of northern Italy insulating houses to not waste energy in the British winter is incredibly important and it very labor intensive the British houses were very badly built we built them at a time when we had limitless coal and so we we didn't insulate the windows and the walls and the the the roofs correctly this is a very labor-intensive activity and if you get it right it can create a lot of jobs so there are certainly many things in the green economy some of which are capital intensive some of which are labor intensive on the euro um I did argue for the UK to join the euro I think like many people I failed to understand a crucial problem of the euro zone which is that if you have the banking system regulated and underpinned at a national level rather than at a eurozone level a single currency has a structural vulnerability there is a reason why in the u.s. there is a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and if when a bank in Illinois got into trouble that Bank was reliant on the Illinois Deposit Insurance institution there would be a dangerous correlation of risk within Illinois nobody in the US would think that it is sensible for an Illinois bank to hold as its liquid assets and undiversified portfolio of Illinois state bonds but that is how we structured the European banking system and I think that I like many people failed to understand that that link between the banking system I think that what that implies is that the single most important reform which eurozone now has to do and this is also what Mario Draghi said on Thursday is to try and get agreement to progress to what's called a banking Union which would enable the new firewalls of the eurozone the ESM the European Stability Mechanism rather than lending money to governments to directly put money into banks and I think we have realized and it's again it should be a humbling process in the difficulty to think these strings through in advance that the organisation of banking on an entirely national basis within a single currency zone is a point of vulnerability I think that is the most important reform that we now need to go do I think in the long term the eurozone to be successful will have to go to still deeper levels of federalization with euro bonds but I think in order to make progress we have to focus on the single most important issue and I think that is the ideas of a banking Union which were put forward by the AIA three weeks ago at the spring meeting in DC and which have now been picked up by many people in Europe if we do that I think we can make the eurozone work and get the undoubted benefits of integration that come with it without the offsetting instability that's impossible it's incredibly mcusic well we I think as much for your reply now a co2 environment green economy effect and impact on the creation of new jobs now let's say that Europe took the 2020 commitment with Europe it has a confirmed its commitment and the we already reached the level of renewable energy and we even want to get beyond the target of the 2020 agenda we want to get up to 30 to 33 percent well about 30 percent no impact on the economy well we depend on gas and so we decided to liberalize deregulate this market separating the main operator from the infrastructure with all the implications on connections on infrastructure connections with other pipelines that are coming from the north and the south and this is job so this is investments in the specific area of green economy area Italy is very strong and we can see that when we go around the world we see that our companies are very strong when they go around the world and propose their products I cannot go into details but very often we can sell Italian products very easily and then renewables well Italy had taken a crazy commitment taking money from taxpayers 170 billions in particular in the area of photovoltaics unfortunately what other Europe said was not sufficiently considered in the past investments were concentrated in the periods of maximum costs of panels and with the same money if we had reasonably subdivided the investment we could have made more money out of that but now we have 60 billion in grants available for companies which work with panels or for agriculture something that other year said that very rightly so and that she will find in the next legislature passed by the government has to do with energy efficiency we too want to accelerate investments in the building industry in order to save energy right for the reason that he mentioned there are technologies that are very much labor intensive it is possible to create many new jobs meanwhile we are drafting a new energy plan after the referendum the nuclear road cannot be pursued any more and so we have to think something else and again we are open to suggestions now euro the euro well Europe is bound to act as it is acting a strong front has been forming which is convinced that Europe should do more and project bonds for example that mentioned in Euro bonds now funding of projects strategic projects of Europe that is a process that must be accelerated and then with reference to the euro no we didn't do the things in the proper order perhaps we would have had to introduce first the Union and then the currency but we have the currency the currency is there there are the rules fiscal compact the golden rule so these are strong rules that are already in place perhaps that we should have had institutions able to give liquidity to the euro well the European Central Bank is a very active it can give out money cash money and thanks God that this has happened in the past but now we need a third thing we have the rules that we should all implement well the rules were there but sometimes they were not respected they were violated and very often the market did not realize that what was happening because things like Greece happened because so-called markets they continued to pump money to give money and zero tax rate and I close the parentheses year so now we have a third phase which is that of the leadership of courage of saying we join air force it is an issue of shared responsibility whereby all the pieces in the jigsaw stick together and hold it is not possible that Europe is let's say put in difficulty by a few countries that represent 2% of the total amount so I think that this is a fundamental passage and if we manage to take see to that we will be successful and our government too is working on that because the next step is that of collective responsibility where Europe which is probably the strongest area of the world if we put together all the countries of Europe so Europe now a hazard to act together and this will be a major step forward in terms of leadership and this is something that we do not see yet and yet I think that we are creating the conditions for that to happen Italy can now finally play a major role of thanks to the credibility that it enjoys again and the Euro think and not only will remain but will remain in all the current participating countries thank you thank you I'm sorry we can take only one question I'm very sorry but I was told that we have to close at five past twelve because there is an airplane that has to be caught in Bologna so just one question very short please my question is for Adair Turner in your very thorough analysis that you talked about the need in economic thinking to think of objectives potentials and not only limits how come that in your country you do not manage to win over the opposition of the big in financially opposed at the table in tax in terms of all the opportunities that we would derive from that in terms of possible financing and funding and investments and then don't you think that oftentimes we hear or rather it is said oftentimes said that the countries needed to marry to the trustor of markets don't you think that it should be the other way round and that markets should again a Mary to our trust and confidence I think the financial system has a job to do in meriting the trust of ordinary people because a market financial system has some vitally important functions to perform in taking people's savings and allocating it through to useful end investment that that is fundamental we would not have constructed the prosperity of Europe today without a complex financial system but I think before the crisis elements of the financial system diverged from that fundamentally useful activity engaged in the proliferation of complex forms of financial innovation which served no fundamental social purpose in terms of the intermediation of savings through to investment but were fundamentally somewhat complex forms of what economists call rent extraction with unnecessary complexity and in a way that created risk and that is why two years ago three years ago now I became somewhat notorious in the UK where I said that some of the activities of the financial markets were socially useless and I continue to believe that that is the case and I continue to believe that it is important to have strict regulation of a firm's financial firms the financial system to make sure the is focusing on the activities which are fundamentally important rather than diverging into some unnecessary and risky activities now having said that at the end of the day one of the things that financial markets will do is lend money to governments and when they have lent money to governments they will have to you know have points of view of the ability of that government to repay I think we have a problem that those points of view are often unstable I think for instance we should criticize the bond markets for having been too willing to lend money to Greece in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 at that time they were willing to lend money to Greece for hardly more than they were lending money to Germany this was not rational and it was not helpful either to the stability of the system or to the people of Greece it encouraged the people of Greece to take on board a set of debt commitments that they could not possibly afford so there is a role for the financial markets which will involve and I think one has to accept this sometimes saying to people know you are not credit worthy and I'm not going to extend money to them and we mustn't disparage that role and as I say I think if we'd had more discipline on that role before the crisis that would have been a good thing but I think the thing we need particularly to regulate strongly against is the way in which the financial system can proliferate an unnecessary complex level of innovation which is to the benefit of the people in the financial system but not to wider society and I think I'm gonna have to go and get in a car which is going to take me to the Bologna station I think ability to get out thank you very much thank you very much professor Turner thank you for sharing your time with us that was when this request about you see Kumail la demanda part of the question was not answered the due to time constraint but also perhaps due to the fact that miss aterna has an official role of course I would like to go back to that in my previous life I was perhaps the only banker saying that we should talk about the Tobin tax provided that it was properly designed and provided that it would not create problems for Europe at large and yet I think that it was worth doing that but I had to be very cautious in saying that because I was not representing the sector I was part of where unanimously or almost unanimously there is a position against the taxation of financial transactions now since I have a new role I can speak out and I can say that many citizens and rightly so think think that this could be a reserve we can use and this might really help us fill gaps that have to be filled and we are working on that and our government will push in this direction Minister para you'll talked about the 50s and so of a period of convergence in Italy and the economic miracle now we have a crisis Italy is still a manufacturing power I think number 10 in the world we are part of the g8 and yet I think that we still have to reconstruct we do not have the destruction of the war but we have a destruction of a social system which is full of holes so what do you think our similarities and differences between these two reconstructions and while in the 50s a limited number of people would believe that Italy would become so strong now we have a different situation we have in general the impression that this leadership can be lost more questions buongiorno whatever report Darrell attends Anacin I would like to draw our attention again on to the topic of the festival generations since that is the topic I was sort of surprised not to hear anything about that and the same goes for the action of government there are reforms that could be made were at zero cost for universities universities are collapsing and many young people expected or hoped that this technical government would do many things to improve the situation so how come that we do not speak about young people young people that live Italy and do not come back afterwards not that people go abroad as simply to study they do not come back and what type of grouse can we have without hyung people Medora a roofer cuesta demand lay-up are not OD don t I have a question there are you talked about plans for development and growth is there also one taking into account of the fact that we will have another government following this one and that government will have to follow suit and we'll have to continue what has to started because perhaps that will not happen due to the clashes between the different parties with reference to growth how can we solve the problem of public investment due to the so called stability pact that we have in the administration I know that a number of measures have been proposed whereby banks would help but that just solves partially the problem and for a limited time period so what about that my name is Elisabetta brunella and i would like to go back to two aspects that were mentioned by the minister in his speech with reference to two options by the government first and I would like to ask something about attention being given to all social stakeholders or since you are the Minister for infrastructure I would like to ask you was the government has done because you see more than 300 university professors and after government to review its decision about the no tava and the 57 kilometer tunnel between Italy and France which is so expensive we asked the government to consider the needs voiced by people living as the area forecasts made 20 years ago did not come true and there we have a reduction in road and rail transport so the government addressed this issue and limited though itself to say that in already made the decision was confirmed why are you not listening to people who tell you that we have a risk here because this is probably a useless well and daiva which will be an additional burden for future generations so Prime Minister Monti said you would give us an analysis of costs and benefits I think that that has not occurred I think that first we should have a cost-benefit analysis and then a decision should be made so I ask you to listen to the observations made by people who based on analyses tell you that this building yard could be socially useless as a burden for future generations of course we would be very happy to have your minister in the Sousa to address this issue Alaura you to demand a complex questions I will try and answer all questions question about the 50s and the economic miracle you said in your question that there was a crisis at a time but I think that there is a difference you see because Italy after the war was destroyed the economy was basically non-existent people were illiterate there was no infrastructure and we are talking about a totally different world a totally different world now we have a welfare system which is very strong one of the best ones in the world we compare our situation and benchmark it having in mind an ideal perhaps but you see there are very few countries in the world that guarantee education and health care and welfare as is the case in Italy in the 50s we did not have that at the time there was a lot of energy and there was a willingness to reconstruct altogether the country to get out of a terrible situation and we were very successful we had an incredible result over a time period of just a few years but the the the crisis in the 50s was terrible much worse than what we have today also in terms of unemployment we are in a stronger position now Italy has accumulated forces on the market which cannot be compared and contrasted with the post-war situation and that would mean that with less effort we could achieve things and yet we'll have to be honest and say that the platform we started from today is much better than what we had after the war and then another strong word was used talking about the destruction or the social we do not have that it is not so and if we benchmark against the other countries again we see that clearly since there was the need for a technical government that meant that we had a very severe financial problem and yet we are a country where we have a third sector where families of strong will will have communities with a welfare system and that holds Italy together and so if you are aware of the rest of the world you know that that is true of course everything can be improved and strengthened and yet we must say based on comparisons with the other countries that we enjoy a strong position and yet we also know that unless we act we run the risk of losing what who have achieved which present though should make us proud then growth and young people I have to mention several things here if we talk about growth in the medium term it is because we think of young people it is not that we think of the elderly growth is for young people so the sacrifices that we ask for today to create growth are and will be beneficial for young people people who are about to enter the labor market or will do so in the future and reforms including pension the pension reform where devised in order not to excessively burden young people and also the fact that we did not cut anything in the schooling and education system testifies to that the ministry for education is working in this direction meaning that it is not so that we said well we cut everything and we start from scratch which was something that happens in the past but we did not do so because we wanted to start banking on what had already been done the right things that had already been done so we should not think that we have to label a reform a reform for young people for that reform to be in favour of young people and the same goes for the startups it is clear that it is not only limited to young people but we know for sure that the birth of new companies in the website the green economy and so on and so forth is something that pertains especially to young people now the fact that there are many young Italians that find the satisfactory job brothah means that we have a university system which educates people who are then ready and talented enough to get jobs abroad and then we also answer should attract these young people and let them come back to Italy well I do not want to defend anything because I've just arrived in this post but it is very important that we do not depict ourselves as something that in fact does not exist let's not throw everything away saying that in Italy nothing works because this is not the case I wouldn't be the third or fourth European economy or where we have 10% growth of exports we wouldn't be such a country where if one get sake there's a rest to die so we are not a country which produces enabled people unfit people of course we also create a lot of unemployed because in some sectors we continue to create competencies which are not a necessary for the economy but it's lights and shadows Italy is often the sum of opposed things so there is a good and bad know the question about the next government and well I don't know what will happen except for one thing what we are doing and what we will continue to do it's not just incentives that you can dismiss and change it is all deep structural measures where it is more difficult and all these things are then approved by the government we are a government which then submits its laws to the government and whatever we have drafted today the so far has been approved by the government so in depth the structural reforms are from tax to pensions that incentives well I don't mean to say that they cannot be changed because the next government can change these laws can improve them but the things that we are doing are useful things and I don't believe that the next government will change them we did things that were very useful to avoid the slipping of Italy and then investments are blocked by the stability pact well it's true we see that there are municipalities which have liquidity and which have resources but they cannot invest those resources not even to pay their debt but again we should know that whatever we do for our growth agenda would be useless if we lost credibility and discipline in terms of public accounts and the stability pact is a mechanism in order not to go out of the threshold it's absurd of course we need to go beyond the situation where you nevertheless have resources but you cannot spend them but please consider that the prerequisite for the success of the future initiatives is to convince the world which was not convinced that Italy is very serious in terms of its a public debt the certification does not resolve the problem for those of you who are not experts well what we did recently in terms of the debt of the public administration over Jews was to say I give you a document which certifies that there is a debt this is something that was not present earlier a company which had a debt a credit with the local hospital could not bring that invoice to the bank to habit discounted because it was not recognized it was not certified no the public administration did not really accept this exercise so willingly but nevertheless that was a pre azita to make those credits discount able so there are many ways to do that so the certification together with the insurance policy that we issue should make those credits discount able in the bank now of course the problem is the actual payment and the next months and years we will have to go back to the right track and be in line with the EU directly their own payments we will have to find a 50 60 billions a large sum of money in order to pay back this money and then Tavor well I already spoke about that I never said that we approved it because we decedent we proved that because we received that and we considered it useful it is not a very expensive tunnel because it is almost fully paid by Europe and France it is something that we can afford it's not a question of discussion 0.3 10 in ten years so it's something that we can afford and then actual needs okay una cosa nostra port that knows decreasing doing so something that is you say that it's not being used but it's not being used because it is not very well done because in logistic terms it is not appropriate it is not a tunnel which is well integrated in the European corridor and this is our object it's just a small piece which does not belong only to Italy or Val de Souza as you see in the map but it is the missing link in order to have the vertical and horizontal tunnels without which the high velocity train system would not work so not only is it a commitment not only is it a responsibility not only is it paid by others not only did we do all the possible checks and controls it was the plan was slightly modified the track has been brought back to the historic line we do not use up good soil because it's just 11 hectares of non usable soil so please believe me we made a very accurate analysis which was then presented as a document and this document is public there are different viewpoints considered and we good faith believe that we have done something useful for our country although that was a responsibility difficult to take up thank you thank you so much
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