Healthcare, Mattarella: “No to the return of territorial, generational and social gaps”

“We are experiencing profound transformations that impact the structures and the very sustainability of the welfare system. We cannot allow territorial, generational and social gaps to return, both in the health field and in other dynamics of social integration”, writes the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarellain a message to the ‘Welfare, Italy’ Forum 2024. Words that also fit into the debate on differentiated autonomy and which arrive the day after the call to welcome migrants while government ships were traveling to reach the Schengjin and Gijade in Albania.

The Welfare system, “the result of the principles of the Constitution and the choices made in the republican decades, constitutes – recalls the Head of State – a pillar of our social model, as well as an essential feature of citizenship itself. However, the services, the rules, the balances achieved are not guaranteed in the abstract, but require continuous adaptation and strengthening with respect to the changes in demands that come from society, in order to ensure the rights have their indispensable universalistic character”. For Mattarella “innovation and planning must characterize this commitment, to implement, over time, the constitutional direction which places the person at the center and which ensures adequate social protection in the name of equal rights for those in need”.

A challenge that concerns the whole of Europe, due to “the interconnection that characterizes the societies of the 27 countries of the Union. Modern welfare, in addition to being protection, security and law, is increasingly – concludes Mattarella – an important component of a country’s identity and of the heritage of values ​​of cohesion, solidarity and culture that characterizes the continent. The commitment to research and proposals undertaken by the Think Tank “Welfare, Italy” with the drafting of the annual report is, from this point of view, appreciable.