In 1992 the euro did not exist and the currencies of European Countries were joined together in the EMS, a common monetary system that kept them within fluctuation bands that could not exceed 2.5%. If market pressure pushed any currency close to the margin, there was the obligation of all central banks to support it so as to avoid its exit. It was a very strong guarantee, but it was us Italians who were the first to have to ascertain that this support was not unlimited (like we thought) and that therefore one could leave the EMS.

At the beginning of September of that year, the Bundesbank told the Bank of Italy that supporting the lira jeopardized the solidity of the Deutche mark and therefore of the entire system. From the Monday after, therefore, it would no longer have given Deutsche marks in exchange for lira. Italy expressed its surprise but it nevertheless could not do anything but to take note.

It devalued, but a few days after, due to the weakness of the pound (that should have done the same but did not deem it opportune), first the pound and then the lira left the EMS. The lira a few months later, once it had shored up internal accounts, went back in. Now there is the euro and, jurists tell us, with the euro we have more guarantees, because one cannot leave the euro. The euro, in fact, is the currency not of the Countries that adopted it, but of the entire Union to the point that only member States that are not yet able to be part of it (in addition to the very few that obtained the so-called "opt-out" to the Treaty) can temporarily stay out. The conclusion is, therefore, that one can leave the Union (the Treaty has a special clause towards this end) but not the euro.

I fear that relying today on this conclusion can make us clash with reality, exactly like when we received the communication from the Bundesbank that I spoke of earlier. Let's look at what is happening in Greece. For some time now Greek banks have in fact been excluded from the European interbank circuit, the channel that allows liquidity that is created in our banks to flow from one to the other and to permanently feed them through reciprocal loans according to the respective needs. This is a typical effect of a confidence crisis that has been created and no one can force a bank to do otherwise. Where do the financial resources, even though limited, which keep circulating in the Greek economy come from?

They come from the "emergency liquidity assistance", or from the liquidity that central banks have always injected in their role of lenders of last resort and that in our Union is allowed under article 123 of the Treaty, on condition that it goes directly to cover sovereign debt. This means that Greece today lives on only the liquidity that its central bank makes available, until it will be allowed by the European Central Bank. What will happen on the day when the Greek central bank receives a notice from Frankfurt similar to the one that we received in September of 1992? Whatever jurists say, that day, Greece will either shut down or it will allow its central bank to continue injecting liquidity that, whatever the currency, would no longer be constituted by the euros of the Union.

The reality is, therefore, that the conclusion that until some time ago we thought was obvious has to be to say the least amended. It is still true that States cannot leave the euro, but it is a fact that the euro can leave States. One cannot rule over the reasons of stability. If this is the case, it brings us to two immediate questions. This first is do we really have to oppose the proposals emerging in Germany (the CDU, Angela Merkel's party, will discuss it in these days) to adopt measures to allow for a regulated exit from the euro? The second is, regulated or not, does Italy run the risk, twenty years after leaving the EMS, of exiting also the euro?

Months ago, I would have given a negative answer to the German proposal, now I would think it over. I think the creation of two bands, a weak euro and a strong euro, would be contrary to the nature of the euro as a currency of the Union as it would split it. But it certainly would make more sense to acknowledge the asymmetry that we created when we foresaw that States not yet in line with the parameters required for the euro could not join it, while those that after having entered it went out of line could stay in and could not be suspended. It is tough to be alone on the sidewalk, with a cardboard suitcase and at the mercy of markets. But just the possibility of this can prompt a more effective struggle to avoid it and in any case, as we saw, this can happen also today with the same rules.

Can this happen to us? I will not repeat the list of reasons, and of numbers, that show our distance from Greece and the multiple resources that we have to get out of the trouble that we are in. It is a list that everyone we speak with, also markets, know very well and can bring them to make a cross-claim that for us every day that passes becomes more embarrassing: why then don't you decide to use those resources, why don't you cut costs, why don't you eliminate your external diseconomies, why don't you increase your productivity, why don't you significantly reduce your debt?

The cross-claim after all arrived and was translated into thirty-nine questions that European Monetary and Economic Affairs Commissioner, Olli Rehn, sent to the Italian Government. Let's read these thirty-nine questions and we will immediately understand why, despite our differences with Greece, we run the risk, at the moment, of ending up in the same trouble. In Greece the Papandreou government before resigning adopted and made Parliament approve scores of measures, all those that the European Union and the International Monetary Fund had asked him progressively to adopt. Those that were self-executing (salary cuts and tax increases) became operational, while all the others and therefore the more challenging reforms stayed on paper. The "implementation" will and capability by the apparatus was close to zero and Greece just became poorer.

Well then, Olli Rehn, through each of his questions asks Italy how and when it will "implement" its measures. What answer will Italy be able to give if after having hastily approved the measures in Parliament, it leaves them in the Official Journal, Parliament dissolves the government and it goes straight in an election campaign? It is difficult for sharply divided political forces to support together a government that prevents a similar end. But they have to do so if they want to save, along with Italy, their own honor.

13 novembre 2011