As president of the central bank, Draghi pushed for changes, including loosening labor market regulations and easing bureaucracy that, especially in Italy, would require less dependence on the bank. It basically didn’t happen.
Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian Treasury, said that if Draghi succeeded in forming a government, he probably would not take up these issues immediately. His focus would be on launching the vaccine and managing more than € 200 billion, which Draghi on Wednesday called “the extraordinary resources of the European Union”.
Unlike Mario Monti, another economist hired as technocratic prime minister to bail out Italian politicians during the debt crisis, Draghi is tasked with spending, rather than cutting, billions of euros.
In a speech in Rimini last year, Draghi, whose name has been mentioned for years as a potential candidate to replace President Sergio Mattarella as head of state in 2022, said foreign investors would accept an increase in Italian debt if the country invested money. in “human capital, in crucial infrastructure for production, in research. “
Draghi’s supporters are optimistic that he will set Italy’s paralyzed public works projects in motion and that it will invest more in job creation and education.
“Italy is a country that has a lot of money to spend,” said Matteo Renzi, the former prime minister, in an interview. “We could have thrown it all away, we would have risked spending it badly.” Instead, he said: “Mario Draghi in Italy means trust and this is the first rule of the economy”.