The CNEL has launched a stress test divided into 10 macro areas to assess the impact on the country system of the economic crisis caused by the measures taken by the Government to deal with the health emergency linked to the spread of Covid-19, the new Coronavirus.

The 10 areas of the stress test also represent the sectors most affected by the crisis:

·         Central and peripheral public services, the National Health Service, the presence of the state in the economy;

·         The banking system;

·         The digital infrastructure;

·         The logistics;

·         School and Education;

·         Agriculture and food-supply chain;

·         Tourism, services and leisure time;

·         The “Made in Italy”;

·         Industry;

·         Work and Welfare state

The stress test, which involves a large phase of recognition, listening and monitoring, will be set starting from the 2019 public budget figure, which was positive (1.6% deficit, against a target of 2.2%). Before the pandemic, Italy was an economy that was surviving on a borderline between stagnation and decline, but it is still a rich country. The net wealth of households and non-financial companies (latest data from the Bank of Italy 2018) is equal to 9,780 billion euros. The household and non-financial business debt is less than 900 billion. Italy has scrupulously complied with the European treaties. There is no reason why a country with these basic elements could suffer a financial crisis.

The pandemic has completely paralyzed the two pillars on which Italy sustained the impact of the 2008-2015 great recession: exports, within a production chain not only national, and the tourism and agro-food supply chain, which has its strength in national and international catering. Without the ten-year success of these two structural axes, today we would register a -25% level of income than in 2008 before the crisis, instead of -4%. The paralysis of the production of entire sectors that Italy had to halt to counter the spread of contagion, requires a verification of all the strategic resources that the country has at its disposal for the restart. It requires the identification of the bottlenecks of which the pandemic emergency has clearly demonstrated the existence.

"In recent days, we risked being sucked into a financial crisis that would have made impossible the restart at the end of the emergency. Fortunately, this slip has been, at the moment, avoided thanks to the intervention, albeit late, of the ECB. Nevertheless, how long will our country still be able to hold? This is why a real general stress test is needed", says CNEL president Tiziano Treu. 

Meanwhile, in the context of the tasks entrusted to it by the Constitution and the law, the National Council of Economy and Labour is working on a strategic programme to be submitted to the Government and Parliament, which will be discussed in the next Assembly scheduled for April 8 by videoconference, in which the social partners and the most representative productive forces will be called to make a first assessment of current needs and future prospects.