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From our correspondent
«If Trump were to win in the American elections, the alarm clock would sound for Europe. We must learn not to sit on the passenger side, but to guide our destiny: we must focus on our political cycle, now that the new European Commission is born, and walk on our own two feet.” The Governor of the Central Bank of Portugal, Mario Centeno, speaks in front of a large audience of students in Florence, guest of the president of the Permanent Youth-Publishers Observatory Andrea Ceccherini. He speaks in the round, answering many questions from the kids, even in his role as former finance minister of Portugal and former president of the Eurogroup. Europe must lead alone, he says. And all countries must make reforms: from Italy to Germany. «Italy must have the reduction of public debt as a priority», he observes. Germany, he says, has instead dealt well with the energy crisis following the war in Ukraine, but now finds itself facing the challenge of the Chinese slowdown and tariffs. To do this, the European Union is needed: «In Europe, savings are greater than investments, because our money goes to support investments in the United States – he observes -. Instead, it would be good if our savings remained here with us.” But for this – he concludes laconically – we need more trust between the various European countries (today however there is little of it, especially between the countries of the North towards those of the South) and we need greater European integration on the capital market front.
To students who asked how Portugal managed to emerge from the deep crisis into which it was plunged in 2011, Centeno responded thus: «Portugal’s recipe was based on two ingredients. Financial stability first and foremost: that is, debt and deficit reduction. Because this is the first condition for giving predictability to fiscal policy and therefore for attracting investments. And the second ingredient is education.”
