The effects of aid policies for the Southern regions (1998)

Fifty years have passed since the launch of the extraordinary intervention policy in favour of the Southern regions. And yet, many of the problems of the Mezzogiorno remain unresolved. However, in recent years, with the emergence of political and social forces that have questioned the legitimacy of the funds allocated to the Southern regions, there has been a shift from a phase in which the problem of the South seemed to have been forgotten to another in which these transfers have been criticised for being among the leading causes of the imbalances in Italian public finance. The apparent consequence of this approach is that any policy to rebalance the public budget must first be based on the drastic cut in transfers to the South.

The end of the extraordinary intervention policy (May 1993) has left the South in a phase of complete transition. On the one hand, it is impossible not to note the considerable progress achieved by the Southern regions. On the other hand, however, it is clear that the gap between North and South – which had significantly decreased in the period 1960-1975 – has been growing again for more than a decade.