Good morning everyone. Thank you to the director for having me at this wonderful event. Compliments on the location — every time I return to Naples my heart fills with joy. Good morning to the audience, good morning to the young people who in the last few minutes have become more numerous. That too fills my heart with joy, because — and good morning also to the listeners of Radio Radicale and to the people watching us on streaming.
I was saying that it fills my heart with joy to see young people, because we should explain to them why at this moment we are saying that the Green Deal has been a big mistake. Look, the only group of people who have actually dealt with climate change in recent years are precisely them — the young — whom we have even mocked, ridiculed, insulted, saying they had nothing better to do than go out into the streets and block traffic. They have one reason that is worth more than all the others: they are our future. So perhaps it is with them that we should speak with more care.
Because the Green Deal — and then I'll go to our first interviewee, who is Andrea Illy, the chairman of illycaffè, with whom we will clearly have a conversation in this direction too. But I don't know if talking about the Green Deal, as we have in recent years, has been the correct approach. Perhaps we should have focused not so much on the objectives — which I believe everyone shares — but rather on the rules. Instead, we insisted on saying that, ideologically speaking, with a very ideological approach, that stuff was wrong. And yet we have just heard that China is investing enormously in electric cars, so once it has fully captured — if it hasn't already — the African market, it will arrive in Europe with its electric cars that will cost much less than ours, and so we will be buying Chinese cars.
This is on the, let's say, more economic level and less attentive to the needs of young people. But it's clear that the concerns and needs of those who represent our future matter. So, Dr. Illy, thank you first of all for being with us, with me, in this remote dialogue. Good morning.
Good morning. Can you hear me well?
Perfectly. We have said many times in the last — in the last half hour, 40 minutes of listening — how important industrialists are at this moment, because they can clearly help provide a vision that, as I understand it, is industrial. I'm talking about this — it seems to me that a post is missing. I heard in a recorded interview in Davos, if I'm not mistaken, the 2026 Davos — truly strange, unusual — at a time of transition in which, moreover, we could not have expected a direct confrontation between America and Iran. One year ago it was being spoken of as, let's say, the black swan of geopolitics. No, but in the programs I was hosting we didn't say you can't even imagine it — and yet we got there, with all that it implies on the energy level, because it seems to me we are already in a supply shock, considering what the Qataris have said.
So, first of all, tell me how you see it, given that 2026 was supposed to be an important year for Illy, right, precisely for the destiny, the future, and the projection into the future of your great company. And yet it seems to me that it won't be, precisely because it is still a year that is too unstable. What must be done at this moment? What can industrialists do relative to, let's say, the political decision-maker and then Europe? We are in the hours of the European Council, without repeating what is being discussed and what they are fighting about, President.
Well, first of all, thank you, and I greet director Alessandro Barbano. I am pleased to be with you, sorry not to be able to be there physically, but I am participating equally. You mentioned in your question Davos — I came out of it, and I declared it, with the impression of being in a casino. I don't know how many of you have been to Las Vegas, but when you walk into one of those enormous rooms, thousands of square meters full of tables, slot machines, everyone playing, negotiating, and so on — that is how I pictured the world today.
Because there is a dismantling of a previous global order, perhaps — but I don't know — in search of a new future global order. In fact, at this moment we are facing global disorder triggered by, I would say, three things. The first is the struggle for hegemony between China and the United States. The second is the green economy, which was mentioned, because it must not be forgotten that it is an incontrovertible reality that already accounts for over 5% of global GDP, grows at twice the rate of GDP, and is therefore certainly a reality that changes geoeconomics and geopolitics.
And the third stabilizing factor is artificial intelligence, which at this moment is literally doping the economy, because global stock market capitalization is sustained by it, and it is hoped that it can hold, also in terms of generating returns on these enormous investments. So all this instability created the conditions for this upheaval that happened at the beginning of last year with the advent of the new American administration, and which then gives rise to — almost monthly — some crisis here and there of different origins, whether they are tariffs, military or security-related, or what have you.
So, facing this new global disorder — what can entrepreneurs do? Entrepreneurs can, first of all, stay the course. Stay the course on their path — that is, on the trajectory they have charted over time, a trajectory that is very often historic for companies that are deeply rooted in time and territory — and not let themselves be too distracted, because that would risk putting them in a situation of oscillation and causing them to become unbalanced.
And increase the resilience of businesses.
To increase resilience — resilience is a word of physical origin, meaning the ability of systems to adapt to external shocks. Exactly right from this point of view, and it's not just a fashionable word. So external shocks are the multiple daily externalities of which the war in Iran is only the latest. Previously there were many others — other wars and climate crises. Because let's not forget that if the reason the green economy is a reality is an incontrovertible necessity — because the climate issue is a very, very serious issue — then in the face of these crises, what can be done?
Avoid derailing. So companies that have strategic and commercial flexibility to be able to reallocate their production to different markets and channels, different client segments, as was done during COVID for example. During COVID, we were traditionally suppliers of public establishments, which were closed, so we recovered a very substantial share of the revenue from those establishments at the domestic level, because people were staying home more and consuming more coffee at home. But that required the flexibility that then allowed the company not to go into loss, not to go into financial crisis.
And among these elements of resilience is also obviously lowering the break-even point — trying to reduce investments and fixed costs. This is what I would say about the last part of your long question, which was the European Union. The European Union at this moment has an opportunity, which is to take a leap forward. Because it must not be forgotten that the European Union was born from a utopia. Someone said: 'We need to be more like the United States to have more critical mass, a strong currency, a strong market, a strong GDP, but our economic union cannot be born from political union because we are too diverse.'
So just as the United States is a federal state, Europe was born instead with this utopian idea that had never been realized before — a union that would nonetheless leave sovereignty, or at least part of it, with the member states. Now this sovereignty issue is the key theme, because it cannot remain, let's say, halfway across the ford forever, with sovereignty partly in Brussels, partly in the member states, but that is in reality so weak on both sides that in the end it ends up being sovereign in neither.
But so, President, excuse me — where should this sovereignty be located in your view?
In my view, on a roadmap level, there is no alternative to locating it in Brussels. This is the issue that people don't like, but there is no other way. Otherwise, how can you compete? How can you negotiate on equal footing with the United States, with China, and so on, if you are full of cross-vetoes within the European Union itself? We don't want to immediately transfer sovereignty to Brussels, but at least let's get rid of this rule that is absolutely impossible from a — I would say — mathematical perspective, of having unanimity on all decisions. We are a union of 27 and every decision is taken by unanimity. I mean, all the condominiums in the world would be empty because the co-owners can't even agree on who cleans the stairs.
But this is our legal framework, because we made a union by force. To create it at all we accepted any compromise — it's as if we were born limping. Too bad that too many decades have passed and in those decades all the reform paths that could increase competitiveness were not undertaken. And in fact we have decreased it.
And the intervention made by Dr. Guidi before me is unfortunately very realistic. President, so today in the face of the threats — the threats from the United States, the threats of war, the Russian threat in Ukraine, the threat of African immigration — can the 100 influential European politicians, the malcontents who have no intention of reducing their own prerogatives, realize that they will go home anyway if they don't facilitate a strong design? Because unfortunately, man is quite individualistic in general — he only becomes altruistic as a new form of egoism when he has no alternatives.
Well, I believe we have reached the situation where in these very days of the European Council the situation is such that either we find some form of altruism and we all roll up our sleeves, make Europe into something that can at least defend itself, or else we will really be kicked from right, left, and from below too.
Then we arrive at the extremely interesting theory of President Illy — the one about a regenerative economic system. I don't want to talk about just one sector, because according to Illy it is truly possible to produce growth while consuming fewer resources. So explain how that's done. But regarding Europe, regarding member states — there is a mechanism, you surely already know it, that allows us to do certain things on certain matters, enhanced cooperation. But what is missing from the political classes so that this effort becomes something more concrete? Because otherwise we always find ourselves discussing these things. Do you know how long I've been talking about Europe in these terms?
Since not only the war broke out in Ukraine after Russia's invasion, but also since Trump arrived in America. Someone was saying: 'Look, Trump in America can actually be a great opportunity for Europe.'
But did the political classes seize the opportunity or not? If not, what is it that's missing?
Well, look — in Europe there is only one way to trigger a reform path, and that is to put in a strong man. Someone who knows — we have him, his name is Mario Draghi. Not by chance he made an important report and already did the same exercise in Frankfurt that would be needed in Brussels — reading the cards not only for what is written on them but also for what is not written, because what is not written is clearly possible. And this is the absolute leadership path that Europe needs now to free itself from its bureaucratic shackles, from an agreement that is too restrictive. But obviously no one wants a strong man at this moment because he would clearly pull the chair out from under hundreds of politicians, or more, in the 27 member states.
So the pain threshold must rise. Europe can only unify through crises, but the United States also became a federal state after 25 years of civil war. So unfortunately, Europe's unification path is not trivial and will surely be even more difficult than that of the United States, because while the United States was a world born from colonization — with a very recent culture — Europe's is a millennial culture, so even more difficult, with different languages and traditions. The idea of saying 'we are one' — I don't know.
Wait, wait — we'll get there. But what is missing from the political class? You didn't tell me, because the political class...
A strong man is missing. Yes, a strong man is missing. Meaning — let me step back a level — the complexity of the decisions that need to be taken now regarding the Green Deal, regarding security, regarding governance, regarding financial matters. Let's not forget that the world has accumulated a total debt of 350 trillion, roughly three times GDP, which is something that is absurd — a global debt that increased by 9% in the last year.
In the last six years, the world has produced more physical or durable products — of artificial matter, if you will — than it did in the entire previous century. We are on an exponential trajectory that cannot continue as we are going without leading to self-destruction — for what I will say later about the regenerative economy.
The level of complexity of this scenario, of the decisions to be taken, is such that politicians often lack the competence — meaning, one of the reasons we lack competence is that we all tend toward specialization, whereas these are situations that need to be seen transversally. So this is already a theme of interdisciplinary competence that politics lacks, but not just politics — also the professions, academia, and so on, because we are organized in silos.
Another thing that is missing is time, because the mandate cannot be three to four years with intermediate electoral deadlines, at every moment going into a fibrillation over consensus instead of being able to make decisions that have time horizons of the order of decades, not months. And then there is the ethical issue. Very often, let's say, bad politics tends to make purely electoral instrumentalizations — instead of looking at substance, they look at appearance, and this fuels a whole movement of disinformation of citizens that does nothing but manipulate votes.
So it is precisely democracy that is in crisis, and we are going backward with respect to democracy. Unfortunately, as Merkel declared in Davos some years ago, she said a terrifying phrase that no one picked up on: 'Unfortunately, democracy has not been able to demonstrate over the years that it creates more well-being for citizens than authoritarian systems.' And it's the truth, because authoritarian systems do not necessarily have to be repressive or violent — they can also be acceptable from the point of view of citizens' freedom. So it is a very significant problem that politics must face today.
Very clear. So, where would you put Draghi at this moment? Telegraphically — head of the Commission, replacing Ursula von der Leyen.
