Labelled the Achilles’ heel of the European economy, which itself is already in great difficulty, Italy is now seen as reflecting all the ills of the new century: the global economic crisis, the power of the financial markets, the absence of solutions to the welfare crisis, the deregulation of commercial relations, unfair commercial competition, weak leadership, the crisis of a twentieth century political system.

In other words, the various aspects of the crisis, find their explanation and synthesis in Italy. In the political, economic and social spheres, conflict has arisen between a structured vision of society and the lack of a collective spirit. To tell the truth, a similar conflict can be found in the experience of the European Union itself, and indeed in the Western world: Europe, the United States and Japan, in different ways, are living through a crisis of identity throughout their institutional systems. The institutions are failing to express the dynamics of the changes taking place and thus are unable to represent decisively and rapidly the needs of their sovereign countries. It is a common difficulty to select a political class of the right quality thus creating a crisis of representation.

The inter-linked economies are demonstrating their fragility: an example is Italy’s public debt and its systemic consequences.

The effect of consumerism on the market economy, called “marketism” by Giulio Tremonti, and the magic spell of globalisation mixed with a technical and financial cynicism have produced the global crisis – a structural crisis which Italy exemplifies and where it is possible to observe as in a laboratory, all the negative aspects already mentioned.

The crisis and the critique of a certain “free-trade” without rules is plaguing the economic and cultural debate. This question is also under international discussion, but most keenly felt in Italy because for over twenty years, a new political class, which is not managerial, has based their election campaigns on just this: promises of economic and social liberalism which will automatically and autonomously regulate a new season of development and overall growth.

Meanwhile, the political parties have imploded; the labels – left and right, no longer explain where the parties stand, leading to confusion and at the same time, there is a constant regrouping resulting in indistinct ideologies. But is not this the case also in other liberal Western democracies?

Are not the restrictive choices of social policies and welfare reforms of Paris and Berlin and the austerity measures of the White House, the result of the same synthesis: the irreversible crisis of the model of economic expansion which began after the Second World War?

An extreme and dramatic synthesis of this intricate mass of contributing factors, can be found in Italy in 2011. A crisis situation which has been put under the microscope, commented upon but above all feared by the finance ministers of the whole world.

This is why it is essential for everybody to speak about Italy: behind the adventurous political events of the transition from the government of Berlusconi to the technical one of Mario Monti – with all the suggestions, exaggerations, and instrumentalism from all sides – there is the crisis and the failure of a global model of economic and social development, in which the weak link of Italy along with Greece, has experienced the most serious consequences.

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The Pio Manzù Centre’s proposal

In the autumn of 2011, the world’s press devoted thousands of pages and reports to Italy. The Pio Manzù Centre, traditionally motivated by a sense of service and dedicated to analysis of current and future geopolitical and geo-economic scenarios, hereby proposes that a confrontation take place in Italy – which will be about Italy and for Italy. From all over the world, observers, scholars, experts, and men of culture will converge on Rimini to voice their views on what is happening in Italy. The analysis and interpretation of the highly complex and decisive situation Italy finds itself in will be compared with those of other countries and therefore with the entire international political and economic system. Italy is thus a testbench where the world economy can be put under scrutiny, so that ideas, suggestions and hopefully a number of solutions may result not only for Italy but for the wider global crisis. And so, in Rimini, the 2012 Pio Manzù International Conference will be the setting for an attempt to find a way forward, or, as Dante says, “to see again the stars”.

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