 Thanks very much for inviting me here today, the director, Madame Ambassador, the Ambassador of Italy, all the friends and distinguished leaders that came here today. I'm a journalist. It's still very funny for me when they call me a professor. And actually, at the dentist, when the nurse comes, it's like, professor, professor, I keep reading my newspaper and then it's like, Mr. Riosi, that's me. In this, my transition from being a journalist to being a scholar takes another lecture about what's happening in journalism. Very briefly, what I will try to give you today is a sense of what's going on in Italy, what has been going on in Italy, that this may be somewhat somehow different from what you read on the New York Times, or the Financial Times, the Economist. And not because they are wrong. They are actually right, but sometimes. But because the perspective from within the country is different. One of the peculiar learning experiences for me that I lived, shot back in 1940 in the United States, it was the time when I would... It was impossible for me to land in New York City without somebody asking me, how can you Italians elect such a boss like Berlusconi? And I had to go at length in explanations. And then, of course, I would fly back to Rome and then people would ask me, how can the American elect such a boss like President Bush? And I had to, like, skate on thin ice. To make it very short, for the past 20 years, Italy has been divided by a cultural war. More than a political war, it was a cultural war. Berlusconi, city of Berlusconi, represented what his opponents would call a crass, materialistic, consumeristic, non-traditionally culturally Italian world of TV, mass-conceptions, and then they would go on and on with accusations of, of course, with crass parties and the despicable lifestyle. For the Berlusconi press and the Berlusconi TV, the left, the Italian left and the Italian world of culture and politics was run by communists. They were, like, badly reformed communists and they were all intent in ruining the modern society in Europe. It was impossible to, if you have a look at the Berlusconi press for the past 20 years and good luck to you with that, or if you watch the prize-winning movie by the Italian leftist director Nanni Moretti Carodiario that was very famous at the Cannes Festival, the one at the Cannes Festival, where the hero is, the hero's life is like, how can I live in a country where on TV they show the Berlusconi's program? So the real, at the bottom line, trouble with the country was that two worlds were not talking to each other and it was impossible, on a political level, on a cultural level, on a mass media level, to open some negotiation or some dialogue between them. That was then, then something happens. And if, Linda, you can show what happened all of a sudden, a few years ago, Italians saw this on TV. You can see it on YouTube if you like it. Italians saw this on a TV program, one of the very same kind. This is the most important Italian... Look at this guy, you know this guy? Have you seen this guy before? He's trying to win some money on this TV show. I've seen this guy somewhere before. He's my audience, Matteo. I come from a small town in the province of Firenze. He's winning, he's now a very good Italian. He keeps winning, he won 50 million lire, he's like the equivalent of 50,000 lire a year. I do football, as a hobby. I'm at the level of the artist, in the second category. I understand. If something makes you a boy like her, who could do other things, instead of doing the referee to complain... No, the referee is a passion, can you read it? Now he's trying to be exact. He knows the answer, but he can choose his sheets with snow. Okay, this is Matteo Renzi. And when... And when his fellow students were marching on the street fighting against Berlusconi and pilloring Berlusconi with slogans and the sense of their dissatisfaction, he was actually joining a Berlusconi program in order to win money to buy a car. I could say the lecture is over and that's all you had to know about Italy. Meaning that the political standing of Matteo Renzi was that he represents a post-Berlusconian Italy, a generation of Italians that decided that living in a perennial political campaign and living in a perennial civil cultural war between the left and the right, the pro-Berlusconi, the anti-Berlusconi, they were fed up with it and that nobody was taking care of the country. In the meantime, unemployment, lack of innovation, the digital gap, the gap between south and north were becoming enormous. The moral corruption of the country was going nowhere and the public administration needed to be reformed. The problems of the country were there and nobody would take care of them while two tribes were fighting each other. The idea that Italy had to move to a different political conversation is perfectly depicted by the guy that you saw there. Now the problem is that we are trying to discuss today can he make it, can he make it and how can he make it with what political coalition and in what political direction and what coalition does he need to make it? As you know, Matteo Renzi was the mayor of Florence. It's very easy to run Florence. Pretty much, is it on the record or off the record? Let's have a very small section of the... Nothing happened since they chased Dante out of the country and then they had Renaissance. Nothing happened in Florence. With the exception, my American son would say that they invented Negroni in the 1920s, the cocktail Negroni. But apart from that, to run Florence is very easy because it's a rich, established city that runs on its own. So the mayor of Florence is like the director of the Louvre Museum. It's a plumb job. But then he decided to run to win the primary Soviet Party and that was the far west. He was passing from a museum to the far west. He lost once, he won the second time and he won on a platform of... Italy is different from what the newspapers write about. We are not a country this divided into. We are unified and we can move on together. I wasn't surprised when he lost the first time. I was very surprised when he won the second time because it meant that eventually the left had matured to reality after being for so many years locked in their own propaganda. Then in a very Florentinian coupe he got to win the Prime Minister position from his predecessor Enrico Letta. And in a way, a lot of people in his own party blaming why he did that, I think that was a very natural move. There is an ambitious young politician that wins the primaries. He wants the job. He's not waiting in the sidelines to be simmered under a low fire. He wants the job and takes the challenge. His cabinet is a very photogenic cabinet but at the same time is filled up with stars. The Minister for Reforms, Marielle Nabowski, she's having a very, very, very nasty time in the Italian press because she's beautiful and blonde and striking beautiful and striking blonde. At the same time, she's an intimidating young lawyer that knows her stuff very well and I would never be on the other side of a negotiating table with her. The former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Signora Mogherini, has just been appointed as Mrs. Peche instead of Lady Ashton and we wish her well and we'll see how will she fare. And there are like many other young Italians that represent this post-Berlusconian generation. I think, for example, of Signora Scani, she's a 26-year-old member of the Italian Parliament from Umbria dealing with digital education and working on a new system for digital education. When you think of Italy, you don't exactly think about a 26-year-old lady dealing with digital education but that's what the energy that was in the country because even outside the political world you have managers like Andrea Guerra of Luxottica that managed to snatch quite a few brands from the American market or John Elcan, the new leader of Fiat that managed to sign a deal with Chrysler or even the spokesperson of Matteo Renzi, Filippo Senzi, that is a blogger. He was like a real world blogger with all the nerdiness of a real blogger and now you find him at the G8 or the G20 representing the voice of Italy. So I'm not saying at all that Renzi created the energy. The energy was actually there but Renzi managed to plug it in. Renzi managed to tell this generation of people that wanted to change the country, follow me and we'll go. What was very interesting is that the country was stuck in a perennial discontent. The Beppe Grillo famously, the Maverick former comedian of the Five Stars Movement famously won 25% of this quite a lot in a country of 60 million people, 25% of the votes at the political election in 2013 and why? Because you run on a platform, they are all terrible guys. They steal from you, stick with me and we leave the Europe, we leave Europe and we'll be a lonely country that will be run without Tegeve, without ISP trains, without technology and it's like some dream of a rural, old-time Italy. According to the scholars, Mr Grillo was there to stay and he would have eventually won the seat of being a prime minister and I never bought it, I never bought it, mostly because I've been an Italian most of my life and Italians have pretty much, if you read Dante, they have pretty much every defects and vices in the world but they are a country of common sense. The real Italian, not the Italians that you see on TV but the Italian that you meet at your family lunch or dinner or Christmas, it's a guy that sticks to the family, sticks to his job or a lady that sticks to the family or sticks to her job, so they voted for Grillo because they wanted to, as the Americans say, throw the bombs out. They wanted to give a sign of change but when they had in Renzi somebody that actually seemed that they could send the protest in a rational, not in any rational way, they, at the European election of 2014, they gave 40% of the vote to Renzi and 20% of the vote to Grillo. Still, still a very, very interesting amount of votes and still a populist rage not to be underrated but while in France we are seeing Madame Le Pen now running ahead of President Hollande in the polls, we don't see this in Italy and I'm glad that Mr. Renzi managed to do that. And now for the art part. And now for the art part. We have a photogenic, strong, smart, sexy, digital-oriented young prime minister with his great cabinet. Can they make it? The task that they have ahead is daunting and I am very worried. Linda, you tell me when my time is over, okay? Because it's an old country so we can go on and on forever. Italians need reforms. This is like what you read today and yesterday and the day before on the Economist at the Financial Times. But what I would like to share with you is like why they do not vote for reforms? Why do they do not implement reforms? Berlusconi promised reform in 1994 and won and then he didn't deliver. Mr. Prodi, a very decent politician and human being and a personal friend won in 2006 and in 1996 promising reforms and of course Premier Monti and of course Premier Letta. There are two smart and savvy and decent technocrats that promise reforms. Why do we eventually do not implement reforms? And my answer to that that may be wrong is that Italians actually do not want reform. Do not want reform but they do not want reform because the way the country lived and living in Italy from the rubble of World War II to the Dolce Vita of the 60s to the 70s and 80s despite of course the ugly face of terrorism was a wonder because you had freedom, you had welfare system, you had culture, you had the family network, you had Mr. Umberto Eco and the other writers, you had the great public TV. It was a great country to live in and a lot of people didn't like globalization when globalization came, didn't like the global market when the global market came, didn't like that our graduates have to compete with graduates in Shanghai. Why do our kids have to do homework on math every day and instead of playing football to compete with the kids in Hong Kong? Our companies, Martin Wolf in Financial Times is very fond of the Italian small and medium-sized companies. There are 5 million, impressive networks, the second manufacturer in Europe, the sixth manufacturer in the world but why are they in trouble now since the big crisis of 2008 because 2-3rd of them are stuck in Italy, they don't have access to the global market and of course they suffer of the lack of Italian demand because the Italians are spending less and less and so all the companies, despite the great goods that they produce that are stuck to the domestic market, they languish. The companies that have access to the global market they are exporting, they are doing very well, they are a district in the northwest and northeast of Italy that's still growing faster than Germany, faster than Germany. So the problem for Renzi will be how to give Italian companies access to the global market to all of them, how to bring them in the digital market, how to convince their owners, sometimes family oriented that a manager should be should be more than the old nono, the old grandfather still running the company. So what's happening in Italy is something that, again, you won't read the newspaper and actually if you utter this aloud they will actually stone you. That the politicians after the Grillo, after the Crusader campaigns and so many journalists after the public opinion getting really disaffected the politicians eventually changed. If you look at the picture of the Italian cabinet, you don't see people that you have seen 20 years ago. You don't. But if you look who runs the Italian economy you see people that are older than me and make no mistake and kind of old. That's a tragedy. You're not supposed to you have to mourn with me. The unions are stuck in the past. The union are run by people that think like this was the 1975. The universities, they are upset that when we have the international ranking the Italian universities do not make it to the top and instead of thinking like why are we not winning they do like the Italian football fan when the Azuri, the national team, they blame the referee and as you see he was the referee. The media is to blame. This is a Catholic country and former alter boys the media is to blame because we didn't do it was much easier for us to go after a blame the politicians game because we would sell copies we would have TV audience we would have clicks on our website instead of saying why are you not electing politicians that are keen to jumpstart the reform why you are opposing reform in your works in your union in your lab in your shop when Minister Bersani in 2006 tried to open up the Italian taxi system that was before Uber it was really entrenched by people from the same village from the same company forever it turned out very ugly and I know that if you put this on the web I won't be able to get a taxi cab in Rome or Milan anymore but it would turn ugly because taxi drivers simply start beating up reporters on the streets and eventually the politicians fold it so of course we need leaders able to jumpstart reforms but we need an Italian country that accepts reforms you know the numbers and after lunch is never a great time for numbers but just a few figures economic growth has been stagnant in Italy for a generation pretty much my dad managed to be productive in the world and I failed and employment stands at around 13.6% then there is a lot of talk of course the black economy or not but it's 46% for people of employment age who are under 25 years old and to me I was born and raised in Sicily even more staggering is 60% for women under 30 in the south 60% this means there is an entire generation that doesn't work and very soon we'll be unemployable because very soon we'll be older than 35 without having never having get any steady job in the first three months of 2014 the economy contracted by 0.1% will be stagnant for the rest of the year and of course we still drag an 134% debt to GDP ratio that is making our borrowing very very difficult the Italian pessimist will tell you we'll be buried under 1.9 billion euros of public debt the Italian optimist will tell you yeah but we boast 9000 billion of public of private wealth and the Italian family is not in debt like the American family there is Italians not carry private debt so who is right they are both right or they are both wrong because of course we have to create an economy administration that doesn't add every year to the public debt we have to start paying taxes with a more solidarity because the Italian fiscal system works this way if you pay taxes you pay too much taxes more than anybody else in the world so a lot of people do not pay taxes and that's the best fiscal reform so Reincey has to do two things to reduce the tax burden on people that actually pay taxes while luring in tax dodgers and tax evaders from the dark so far our prime minister has concentrated on giving a fiscal break to the most backward segments of our families it's like an 80 euros fiscal break that seem small but a huge, huge symbolic effect is trying to reform the senate and to make our political system a little faster is trying to have a better and fairer electoral law from the one that we are enjoying now and then is negotiating through the economy a minister Mr. Piercarlo Paduan that is a respected economist some break from Europe in order to have a less stern austerity wall around him clearly and you are all foreign affairs experts so I don't want to bother you with that clearly the atmosphere has changed a lot in Europe Germany, France England or whatever is left of England after next week they all agree that the no, no, no, no economy of the past few years doesn't make any sense anymore and we have to allow the local economies to spend a bit and to create, to create jobs I don't think nevertheless I don't think that the solution for Matteo Renzi comes from Europe no matter what Mr. Draghi in Frankfurt no matter what Mrs. Merkel in Berlin how much slack they cut for him they will give him breathing space they will give him ground so that he can maneuver a little better but eventually the destiny of Italy is in the hands of Italians the Italians have to make a decision like they have done for centuries in the past if they want to live in today's world they have to produce cars produce ties produce services go to school according to the rules again school for example school is a sector of the public administration that involves 10 millions Italians every day from people who work in school to people who attend the schools and we spend a lot of money rationally sometimes the teachers are heroes and they really do a lot for the kids sometimes the teachers are slackers and the hero and the slacker get exactly the same money exactly the same treatment and they have exactly the same perspective of career and of course this has to change if you want to improve the performance of our kids so new challenge the real challenge for Matteo Renzi is to convince the country that the bitter pill today will make the ice cream sweeter tomorrow as you know the economist depicted Mr. Renzi leaking his cone his cover I guess in order to tease and a spokesperson that is really an amazing quality guy in terms of communication played what we in terms of communication call a jewel or move to the economist and he simply bought ice cream for his boss and he went around leaking his ice cream saying like what me me worry and this is great and this is says everything that is right about Mr. Renzi young smart move the economist try to corner him and he calls the economy okay but as a very good friend of mine says that ice cream that they were leaking is made by Grom that is a quite brilliant Italian label and it costs on the street on Milan 3.5 euros and it costs to you if you want to buy a kilo something like between 25 30 euros in a cone an ice cream cone that cost 3.5 euros means for a dad 12 euros of ice cream on Sunday and that's something that today a lot of Italian families cannot afford so gimmicks are great when you have to deal with journalists and the main of public opinion and so far Mr. Renzi has been fantastic vis-a-vis the populist and beating vis-a-vis the populist and taking the country together once again and implementing this image as an energetic young leader but the real challenge is tomorrow having not just one Grom making ice cream but a whole country being able to have innovative companies and to me most important than anything else to have that cone instead of us costing 3.5 euros maybe costing 2 euros or having a lot of mums and dads that can buy ice cream on Sundays thank you