It ended in Naples, after starting in Catanzaro, the International Conference of Studies on “Regional gaps, development policies and economic impacts in Italy: A new long-term perspective (1950-2024)”. The event, held from 24 to 26 September 2025, was coordinated by the universities Vanvitelli of Naples e Magna Graecia of Catanzaro in memory of the meridionalist Vittorio Daniele. At the heart of the debate, which brought together economic historians, economists, representatives of institutions and distinguished international keynote speakers, was the assessment of the effectiveness of development policies in the Mezzogiorno.
"Cohesion policy has worked, and has worked well, both in Italy and in Europe," he said. Nicola De Michelis, Director for Cohesion Policy of the European Commission (DG Regional and Urban Policy), He summarised the assessment of an experience which, in his view, is not sufficiently described.
According to De Michelis, cohesion policy programmes in the last programming cycles have produced significant results in multiple areas: from the growth of high-tech companies to that of youth companies, up to the support of tourism flows and the consolidation of industrial excellence. "There is often little and bad talk about these policies", he stressed, recalling instead the concrete transformations that they have generated on the territory.
One of the most important elements that has emerged in recent years is the ability of regions to better target resources towards industrial policies and business support. De Michelis cited, as an example, cases of significant investments in the aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors, which demonstrate the ability to align local development strategies with the major European priorities.
Looking ahead, the European Commission has already put forward its proposals for the next Multiannual Financial Framework. Negotiations are expected to be complex, but one of the main novelties is the introduction of more flexibility for Member States and regions in policy-making. "Cohesion remains a cross-cutting objective of the proposal", explained De Michelis, highlighting how dialogue with territorial levels is indispensable to ensure the effectiveness of interventions.
Regions, in particular, will continue to play a central role in the management and implementation of policies: “The structures that currently manage cohesion policy – managing, certifying and auditing authorities – will remain in place, and the regions will continue to be direct interlocutors with the Commission”.
Within this framework, the challenge will be to clearly define the role of territories in the new phase of cohesion policy, ensuring continuity in already established competences and, at the same time, strengthening the capacity to respond to emerging European priorities.
During the conference, the difficulties encountered in reducing territorial gaps since the 1980s were also highlighted, as demonstrated by the comparative analyses of international economists. Joan Rosés (London School of Economics) and Barry Eichengreen (University of Berkeley).
Claudio De Vincenti, former minister of Southern Italy, professor of Sapienza and LUISS Guido Carli and honorary president of Merita, stressed the need for “a quantum leap for public administrations”. From this point of view, he said, ‘the extension of the PNRR method to cohesion funds, provided for in the European Commission’s proposal to reform the EU budget, is a right path because it focuses on a governance method that returns a strong interaction between the Commission, the national state and the regions to better govern the use of public resources’.
Interesting fact, he pointed out. the Director of SVIMEZ Luca Bianchi, is represented by the “growth in the last years of the South” and in particular by the “dynamism of some regions such as Campania and Puglia”. We now need to “strengthen these trends”. In order to do so, it is important to ‘provide continuity to the RRP’s investment cycle’ and to focus on ‘an industrial policy design that strengthens the business system’.
Also Nicola Rossi, Professor at Tor Vergata University, emphasised the NRRP, whose governance model has proven to “work rather well”. The same is true of the Single Tax Act and the tax credit that they have shown, Rossi said, ‘that it is possible to do in 30-60 days what a normal administration can do in 2 years’.
The topic today, he said at the end of the work Amedeo Lepore, Professor at the University of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’ and LUISS Guido Carli, among the promoters of the initiative, is to initiate “a lasting structural change that does not stop in 2026, when the European intervention will end. Territories, industries, workers and the citizens of the Mezzogiorno must be made protagonists and there must be an adequate national coordination policy”.
The hope is that “our conference will not remain confined to a very important, innovative scientific study, but will also become an element of policy suggestion to those who have the task of implementing interventions that can make the future write a more comfortable story, closer to the interests of the country. A story that brings together the South and the rest of Italy for a unified perspective adapted to the development and growth needs of the whole country”.
The conference hosted the presentation of an extraordinary portal, the result of PRIN 2022 research, which makes the existing databases on development policies for the Mezzogiorno since 1950 readable and comparable.
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