Beyond 2,000 entrepreneurspolitical and institutional representatives. Almost 5,000 people streamed on the Sole 24 Ore, Ansa, Luiss and Stampa Estera websites. Confindustria this year chose Bologna for its Annual Meetinga tangible sign of attention to the territories, a new course to underline the deep industrial soul of the whole country.

In the presence of the President of the Council, Giorgia Meloniand the European Parliament, Roberta MetsolaThe event opened on the notes of the European anthem and the national anthem sung by the Antoniano choir, underlining the symbolic key of the day: a Europe and an Italy with crossed industrial and social destinies that must run again looking to the future.

The message to Europe

From the stage, the President Orsini charted the course: in a rapidly changing global context, European industry is demanding a leading role in order not to be crushed in international competition for strategic resources or suffocated by self-inflicted regulatory drift.

Hence the proposal for a major European recovery plan, a 'New Generation EU for industry'which by mobilising public and private resources revitalises a manufacturing ecosystem cornered by an excess of ideologised environmentalism and creeping industrial distrust.

The challenge is up to the ambitions but also the potential: to create a true European Single Market, on the US model, by eliminating internal frictions and aggregating capital and savings, could generate over EUR 1 trillion in additional output.

But they are needed simpler rules, less bureaucracy, and above all more consistency between objectives and regulatory instruments. Orsini questioned choices that risk penalising entire sectors, such as the automotive industry, still exposed to the sword of Damocles of the European ban on endothermic engines by 2035.

Similarly, he stigmatised the green fundamentalism that has assaulted the industry in recent years, from packaging to CBAM via speculative ETS pollution. The president called for consideration of the environmental transition pragmatically and without compromising the economic competitiveness continent, the same one that has given life and strength to the European welfare model from the post-war period to the present day, and which represents the best guarantee of a prosperous future also for the new generations.

High focus on international issues, in particular on the trade warwith the spectre of US duties to be combated with the antidote of negotiation and opening up to new markets to achieve the target of EUR 700 billion in exports per year. On this point, Confindustria's creation and making available to the country of ExpAnDa digital tool for mapping the export potential of Italian products throughout the world.

What Italy must do

Consistent with the European and international vision, Orsini outlined the proposal for a Extraordinary Industrial Plan targeted in our country as well, with at its centre energy, simplification and reforms, investments e people.

On energy, the president returned to denounce a structural surcharge become unsustainable for Italian companies, with prices reaching peaks of 80% higher than in competitor countries. The appeal to the government was to proceed decisively to the decoupling between the cost of gas and the lower cost of renewables40% of the energy fed into the grid.

The report also referred to the overcoming bureaucratic vetoes blocking 150 GWh of new plants in the area, as well as the need to speed up the return to next-generation modular nuclear powerdefined as a factor of security and strategic independence for the country.

The watchword remains simplificationare many - too many - the zero-cost proposals from Confindustria still awaiting feedback from the institutions, and solutions remain urgently needed on disciplines that have misaligned over time from their purposes, such as 231, for which structural reform has been called for.

In view of the decline in industrial productioninvestment in plant and machinery was the other essential element of Orsini's speech. Without decisive intervention to push entrepreneurs to invest massively again, stable and sustained growth in the order of 2%, as openly hoped for, would be lunar.

Here, then, is the request to use every available resource to 'incentives 6.0'for aPremium IRES really working o for strengthening measures for companies such as the Ace, in the order of at least EUR 8 billion per year for three years, to be raised also through a more flexible use of resources from the NRP and Cohesion Funds.

Pivot of Orsini's reasoning, finally, corporate social responsibility - forcefully claimed - and theAttention to people living of and in the industrial system. Confindustria, recalled its president, intends to work with trade unions and government on the securitybecause 'every death at work is a failure for everyone' and on the purchasing power of workers. The demand: a shrewd use of the Inail surplus, amounting to 1.5 billion euros per year, to be allocated to training and risk prevention.

It is then necessary to set up a exchange between productivity and wagesso that companies and wages grow in tandem, notwithstanding the importance of combating phenomena that debase 'healthy' contracting, such as fake cooperatives and 'pirate' contracts.

From this joint path, along two parallel and complementary tracks, must be born - is the concluding invitation of President Orsini -. 'a new pact between political and social forces'. The goal is 'a stronger Europe' and 'an even greater Italy'.

Relive the event

Download Report