There is a desire to nationalise, but the spirit of Beneduce, creator of IRI, cannot be found

The first reaction is almost Pavlovian: now that the European Union wants to loosen the constraint on state aid, who can stop it anymore? Support, subsidies, aid galore and nationalizations, yes, this taboo also falls. The long-time manager who has led large public and private companies sighs: “It would take Beneduce”. It is a refrain that is always repeated when the government intervenes as a trusted stretcher bearer to pick up the dying company. This time, however, we are no longer faced with a cliché. Partly out of necessity, partly because of the new spirit of the times, partly for an ideological recovery, the statist wave is rising in Italy. At stake are Ilva, the largest western European steel company, Isab, Italy’s second-largest refinery, Ita Airways, the tricolor airline, Montepaschi, the third national bank and, if that’s not enough, Telecom Italia: the state returns to the telephone, steelworker, banker, aviator, oil tanker, all professions it cannot do, no more since Alberto Beneduce’s children and grandchildren left the scene. Giorgia Meloni is also realizing this: before making new debts, you need to have a clear project in mind. Our interlocutor, due to the delicate position he holds in a key joint of this ebb and flow, asks not to be named, but between one course and another he wants to let off steam, neglecting the bread and the filling. He has no nostalgia for the old Iri, she is dead and buried, but it is all the more appropriate to remember how she was born.