Rome Investment Forum 2018, Financing Long-Term Europe

Are national communities responding to the challenges of social polarization, the digital divide, exclusion and life-long learning? Is Europe capable of fixing the pitfalls and filling the gaps of its fledgling construction? Can she have an authoritative voice contributing to stability and prosperity in a growingly unsettled world?
These questions must be addressed urgently and in-depth. That is what we aim at in the fifth edition of the Rome Investment Forum. Stimulating an informed discussion, supported by robust expertise and an awareness of the long-term trends of economic and social development. Above all, building trust and credible perspectives of regeneration and reform, which requires reaching out to a wide spectrum of communities, interests, opinions and sentiments. Starting with the different members of the financial community, i.e. banks, insurance companies, financial markets, pension funds, real estate and investment funds, advisors and stock brokers, and all other components of the associations that are affiliated to the Italian Banking Insurance and Finance Federation. Academics, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, opinion makers, and ordinary citizens, many of which are engaged with us in a journey of dialogue and learning interchange, nationally and internationally, which we highly value and which find in the Rome Forum a moment of catalysis and climax.
Invest in Europe. Because we believe that investment is at the center of the on-going strategies and pipelines of reform projects and efforts. And Europe is the destination, or perhaps the destiny, of our passage towards a future of greater prosperity, social justice, peace and security.
Investment is needed to expand production capacity and potential output, to increase jobs and the quality of life, to modernize the industrial structure enabling more SME to take part in the global value chains and benefit from globalization, to bolster infrastructure, tangible and intangible, physical network and social, to protect the environment and fight social exclusion.
But investment requires finance, i.e. a healthy robust and advanced financial sector. An investment without sound financing is nothing more than an empty promise and a waste of resources. Investment financing requires adjustments on the demand and supply side of the equation. The financial sector must play its unique and fundamental role; raise and channel savings, make them safe and profitable, ensure the quality and sustainability of investment, link the needs and interests of savers and investors, tax-payers and beneficiaries of public subsidies, bridge supply and demand, the present and the future.
Investment was severely hit by the crisis. It has finally recovered, also – with some lag- in Italy. But its features and requirements appear now profoundly changed. The post-crisis recovery has unearthed a new set of financial challenges, technological opportunities and socio-economic gaps. Also, a new world of political realities. The “new normality” calls for new thinking and innovative business strategies. New policy approaches and forms of collaboration between regulators, clients, providers and entrepreneurs. New banking models and insurance contracts, new partnerships between banks insurers and financial markets, new cross border activities, distribution arrangements, customer relations, new data collection and utilization strategies, and a renewed sense of ethics in dealing with savers, investors, institutions and the public opinion. Only a new wave of responsible and forward-looking investment, supported by a well-functioning financial sector, can make this quantum transformation possible and sustainable.
2019 – the year of the European elections – will provide a historic opportunity for taking stock of what we have achieved or failed, and what we have learned in the process, without any complacency nor victimhood, without vanity or self-flagellation. The backlog of unfinished business and unresolved contradictions of the last twenty years will inevitably spill-over into the next phase, hopefully with a more determined commitment to bring about solutions. This means at the EU level strengthening fiscal capacity, fixing the Euro, completing the Banking Union, advancing the Capital Market Union, extending the Investment Plan both in terms of resources and geographic scope particularly towards our near abroad, the Euro-Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, reforming Schengen and Dublin, etc. With what level of ambition? What deliverables? What perceived impact on the ordinary lives of citizens? And would this be enough to carry the support of the disenchanted middle classes and polarized local communities?
The latter part of the past century left an ambitious agenda of visionary projects making up what Rifkin (an American) called “the European dream”: the Enlargement – both East-West and North-South -, the Single Market, Social Europe, the Single Currency, etc. The first part of this century has seen the accomplishment – albeit partial- of several of those projects, but at the same time their deadlock and the surrender to the Dream. A dream is not a dream without a credible plan, but a plan is not a plan without a feasible dream. What we are left with then is broken dreams and shallow plans. This inevitably has consequences on investment, because investment requires both a vision of the future and a realistic roadmap, i.e. both a dream and a plan.
The Rome Forum aims at reconstructing a perspective conducive to investment growth, jobs and welfare, in Italy, in Europe and in the global economy, and discussing how to create an enabling environment for that. Homework starts at home: the “revolution” in the Italian financial sector, which started in the 1990’s and has recently accelerated, must go on, aimed at strengthening open profitable competitive advanced and innovative financial intermediaries and markets, promoting alternative sources of funding, channeling savings towards innovation, long-term assets and the modernization of the real economy. What are the conditions internal and external for this “revolution” to continue?
But the discussion will also focus on European reforms and global challenges. The two go together. Not so much because we need a more muscular “European Sovereignty”, alongside national sovereignties, for the power games of a multipolar, and dangerous, world. But because European leadership can uphold new integration and governance models based on a multinational community of law, freedom, democracy and a shared commitment to the future. This is what keeps us together, a Covenant that even though not carved in the stone of a written Constitution was signed by the Founding Fathers with the still fresh and tragic memory of the blood spilled in the European civil wars of the 20th century.
We dedicate the final session to the memory of Kofi Annan, who passed away in August, where speakers who had the privilege of working with him discuss how to make multilateralism effective, inclusive and supported by the people.