The Magna Grecia Foundation organized a conference on the Single Special Economic Zone (SEZ), highlighting the development opportunities and critical issues related to the reform of differentiated autonomy.

The meeting was concluded by the President of Sicily, Renato Schifani. Minister Raffaele Fitto and SVIMEZ Director, Luca Bianchi, were also in attendance. In his opening remarks the FMG President, Nino Foti said: "The Single SEZ is fundamental for the development of the South, but the reform on differentiated autonomy risks splitting the country".

23 April - The Magna Grecia Foundation organized a conference in Palermo on the Single SEZ of the South to thoroughly analyse the reform of the Special Economic Zone.

During the meeting hosted at the Sirenetta Restaurant and Banquet in Mondello, several speakers took the floor, focusing on the development opportunities and the critical issues of this reform.

After the welcome speech delivered by the Councillor for Productive Activities of the City of Palermo, Giuliano Forzinetti, who underlined how "the Single SEZ represents a winning model for the new challenges that lie ahead and that much will depend on the implementing decrees, which will make clear how the Municipalities will go about the SEZs", the President of the Magna Grecia Foundation, Nino Foti, took the floor.

"The Single SEZ is fundamental for the development of the South," he said. "However, the most critical and worrying issue at hand is the law that provides for the approval of differentiated autonomy." He then added, "in case of approval, what will be the use of the NRRP (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) if at the same time an activity responsible for shifting large sums of money to the areas of the north is being carried out, given that historical spending is constitutionalized, and the country is divided in two? We must bear in mind that agreements between three Regions and the State had already been signed by the left-wing Gentiloni government, so this is not just a problem of the right. As far as the Single SEZ is concerned, which must be combined with the instrument of the European Structural Funds - concluded Nino Foti - it will be essential to make investments in skills and human capital, through training activities, but also in infrastructure. It is therefore crucial for the interventions and prudent choices of the National Strategic Plan currently being defined to take place at the same time".

Pietro Massimo Busetta, Professor of Economic Statistics at the University of Palermo, during his excursus on the history of the Single SEZ, expressed some doubts about this reform, but also highlighted the "strategic nature for attracting investments from abroad and the need to create a unified front in order to attract investments from all over the world".

SVIMEZ General Manager Luca Bianchi said: "The Single SEZ can only be achieved through well-defined plans. The outdated 8-zone model has demonstrated neither efficiency nor speed.  The Single SEZ is an economic zone for the South, it presents risks, but also enormous advantages. It will be essential to implement the strategic plans by identifying the sectors in which to intervene to be included in the investment interventions supported by the tax credit. A move that can only be feasible if accompanied by streamlining administration processes at the central level."

Bianchi then expressed concern about the reform of differentiated autonomy: "Autonomy is an issue of interest and concern for us and our position is one of strong contradiction to the reform currently being discussed. In two days' time we will have a hearing in which we will express our doubts. We are in the presence of two incompatible models. On the one hand, there is a centralization of territorial requests and on the other an autonomy that risks splitting and fragmenting public policies."

Francesco Saverio Coppola, Secretary General of the Guido Dorso International Association, said that "the Single SEZ is the foundation on which we must build the future. The economy of the Mediterranean will grow faster than China and Northern Europe and this is the first great opportunity".

Dario Lo Bosco, President of the Italian Rail Network (RFI), highlighted how "the Single SEZ enhances the role of Sicily, which is a strategic platform in the Mediterranean". "It is a question of harmonising infrastructure networks," he said, "and last but not least, as the European Union's 2001 White Paper stated, achieving virtuous inter-modality for the transport of goods. We must aim to grow railways and sea routes, to a connection with ports, but also with airports, because there are goods that travel through means of a cargo system".

Giuseppe Russello, President of Confindustria Palermo, recalled how companies within SEZs have benefited from positive effects only after 5/6 years from their establishment and how penalizing this is in terms of attractiveness. " With the appointment of the extraordinary commissioners we have witnessed faster processes - he underlined - and now we are waiting for the strategic plan to see what happens".

In the second part of the meeting, Raffaele Fitto, Minister for European Affairs, the South, Cohesion Policies and the NRRP, commented as follows: "The Single SEZ represents a great opportunity for a very large territory and the proposals for the re-perimeter of the old 8 SEZs went towards questionable directions. The work that the government has done with the European Commission has been very complex. It was not a foregone conclusion that the Commission would authorise SEZs, but this choice represents a great opportunity, because it is located in the center of the Mediterranean. From the Mattei Plan to the Single SEZ, to the revision of the NRRP, there is a strategy that we as a government have put in place and that looks to the coming years and decades and not just to the next few days, as happened in the past."

Giosy Romano, former Extraordinary Commissioner of the Government for SEZ Campania and SEZ Calabria, then took the floor, explaining how a Special Economic Zone functions. She then went over the single digital gateway and the epochal turning point represented by the possibility of building facilities for sports and cultural events. Silvia Castagna, member of the AI Committee of the Department for Information and Publishing of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, spoke about the social context in which the SEZ is inserted, taking a snapshot of the territories in which these measures are implemented and analysing the growth benefits. Roberto Di Maria, Professor of Constitutional Law at the "Kore" University of Enna analysed the new legislation linking it to the 2001 constitutional referendum (Titolo V Reform), while Fabio Montesano, CEO of Fidimed, highlighted the role of credit, with reference to the banking desertification currently taking place in the South, explaining the instrument of the Central Guarantee Fund, for small and medium-sized enterprises.

In conclusion, the President of the Sicilian Region, Renato Schifani and MP Francesco Saverio Romano, President of the bicameral Commission for Simplification, highlighted how the Single SEZ simplifies investment processes for companies.

"The South," Romano added, "needs a greater push so as to become, together with the rest of the country, a driving force rather than a burden, in Europe. And we are currently going towards this direction, making sure that the distance between users, administrations and the State is shortened. With the Single SEZ, this process, also through the centralization of powers, shortens the supply chain".

"The Single SEZ certainly represents an opportunity, and it will be so," Schifani concluded. The important thing is that all those deadlines that are strategic for speeding up procedures are shortened. The bet lies therein. I shared with Minister Raffaele Fitto the hypothesis of a single SEZ, i.e. the whole South. Fragmenting interventions on micro areas would have increasingly complicated the possibility of investments thanks to a lower tax burden. Now we have a more complete picture. The challenge, however, is to be consistent with the timing, so the reform looks fine on paper, but it must be set in a speeding up of procedures, because otherwise we will face failure. But it is not the intention of the government, or even of the regional government, that it will do its part."