AIM SORRENTO MEETING 2012

The Regional Observatory Banks-Enterprises of Economy and Finance (OBI), together with other qualified partners, since 2011, has organized the International Economic Meeting entitled “European Mezzogiorno Areas[1] and other  surrounding areas”, with the aim to monitor development processes and find new models of growth for these areas. As every year, the meeting will be held in Sorrento (Naples), in the first weekend of July. Every year the meeting covers different topics, debated with a wide range of international speakers and participants.

Last edition the main topics concerned issues, limits and possible solutions to development problems. 2012 edition will explore subjects such as the future for younger generation, in terms of job mobility and employment.

The essential aim of the Meeting is not focused on finding quick solutions, but rather on helping participants to identify new reflection spurs which can lead to innovative solutions more suitable to a new world.

The Meeting of Sorrento, which is part of “The Triple Mezzogiorno Project”, started in 2009, in collaboration with Universities, Research Institutes and Economists from Germany, Italy and Poland. Its aims is to face the problems of underdevelopment that characterize the Southern Regions of Europe and the Mediterranean Area, in consideration of the severe crisis and transformations that particularly affect these areas.

The basic aim of the Meeting is to permanently create, in the Italian “Mezzogiorno”, an opportunity for discussion and to give the governing class of these territories a datum point, in order to generate new thinking patterns, to improve the interaction and the comparison between governments and foster actions and policies aimed at implementing economic growth and social development.

The first edition of the Meeting, held in 2011 and entitled "European Mezzogiorno Areas -  The Case of Italy. Gordian knots and Alexandrian solutions", showed an actual outline of Southern Italy’s production systems, in a framework of comparison with other “Mezzogiorno” areas in Europe. The meeting represented an opportunity to face unsolved problems which delay development, identified as "Gordian knots" – according to Antoni Kuklinski, Professor at Warsaw University and Member of the Club of Rome – and offered some interesting  “Alexandrian solutions”.

The Meeting, organized together with other partners, among which Svimez, SRM (Associazione Studi e Ricerche per il Mezzogiorno), Fondazione Curella and others, received a special medal by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, for its high scientific, social and economic value.

The aim of the Edition 2012 of the Meeting is to face issues deriving from the deep transformations affecting European Mezzogiorno Areas and Mediterranean Area, in the framework of the Global Economy, with special attention to employment, mobility and social problems for future generations. Globalization has created a new economic and productive balance that has not been yet sufficiently regulated and managed. It has produced acceleration in the mobility of capital and goods, not affecting in the same way people mobility – due to the complexity of factors involved – thus generating local economic and social imbalances.

This new scenario identifies new several, important issues about labour supply and demand connected with mobility, dimension and educational background.

We witness today new forms of migration involving young generations of several countries. A dispersion that recalls to mind the Brownian motion rather than those processes governed and directed by National Governments or Groups of Governments. In this scenario Mezzogiorno Regions risk to merely become exporting territories due to the migration of human resources, with the consequence of an impoverishment of the social and productive tissue.

The aim of the Meeting is to explore all these issues, trying to find out new development models based on common objectives across the different territories, suggesting policy makers possible solutions in the respect of economic laws, social rules and ethical principles.

The main topic is to understand whether, at level of single national governments, in terms of changes affecting labour market regulations or pension systems it will be possible, in the middle and long term, to guarantee the future of younger generations.  

The new development models cannot be disjoint from new forms of cooperation, social cohesion and exploitation of common goods, through the implementation of networks able not only to allow economical benefits but also to achieve scope and scale economies also at social level.

The Meeting – under the patronage of the President of the Italian Republic – is sponsored by eight Southern Italy’s Regions: Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Apulia, Sardinia and Sicily. Moreover, this year the event will be supported by the main Southern Italy’s Universities:  University of Bari,  University of Cagliari, University of Palermo, University of Calabria, UNIMED,  University of Teramo, Parthenope University of Naples, Federico II University of Naples

The topics that will be debated during the Meeting are described in the Summary edited by the Coordinator of the Scientific Committee Francesco Saverio Coppola.

         The Director                                                                  The President

     Antonio Corvino                                                            Michele Matarrese