Happy New Year to all. The just begun 2014 must be the year of economic growth and employment recovery. Especially for Old Europe. There are no alternatives. Meanwhile, the CEBR has told us about how it will change the economic geography of the world by 2030, reporting even unusual overtakings such as the United Kingdom, which is preparing to oust Germany from the throne of Europe. The latest research conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) ranks the world economies of “greater weight”.
China will be able to surpass the U.S. much later than previously assumed, around 2028, while India will overcome Japan on the same date, becoming the third largest economy (today it is only in tenth place). The rise of emerging economies will not stop and take the fifth place in Brazil and Mexico in the top ten.
The biggest revelation, however, is the United Kingdom, who manages to oust Germany, becoming the most prosperous economy in Europe, thanks to a series of policies implemented by the government in London: light taxation, increasing population and independence from the Eurozone’s restrictive constraints.
By contrast, Germany’s economy will grow at a slower pace, due to the aging of the population, the uncertainty that plagues the Euro and the constraints imposed by the Monetary Union.
Painful notes for Italy, which is now in eighth place in the standings, as the Italian economy will collapse to the fifteenth place in 2030. Among patients in Europe even France, to be released from the top ten, due to insufficient growth and a heavy tax regime.
Overall, Europe is bound to lose weight in the global economic scenario. Therefore it needs a shrug of the head, which exceeds the national self-interest and gives breath to new economic, monetary and social policies. This is certainly the hope of Il Bioeconomista.
The bioeconomy is sure to be one of the drivers of the growth of the European economy. Conditio sine qua non is that especially the German government led by Angela Merkel discontinues its policy focused on Wachstum und Stabilität that is undermining the foundations of the possibility of recovery.
The European Union, which next Spring will be required to renew its Parliament, needs a new economic paradigm that supports university-based research, innovation, public and private, the processes of internationalization and business networks, assuming that the unemployment today is no longer just a side effect of the crisis but its same cause. That’s right: if we do not restart immediately employment is difficult to think that the economy in our continent can grow.
Ulrich Baumann
P.s. Last Sunday Giovanni Bonaccorso, Mario’s father, left us. He was 84 years old. He was an honest and hard-working man. A man of that generation that made the Italian economic miracle in the 50s and 60s. And that must be for all Europeans a shining model.
We want to start this new year remembering him.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 