WORLD SOCIAL SUMMIT 2008
'WSS: Emanuele, globalization and welfare, crucial matters for governments'

The characteristics of today's fears compared to the past, impose different "solutions that institutions at all levels must implement". Based on this, Emanuele F. M. Emanuele, President of Fondazione Roma, organized the World Social Summit in collaboration with Censis, held in Rome until September 26th. The answer to today's fears contains in turn "the questions that government must ask themselves".

First of all, globalization and welfare. Because if globalization "contributed on one hand to the social and technological evolution of the last decades", on the other hand it created "enormous inequalities". As a consequence, "the challenges of global competition, digital revolution, technological and productive innovation" are lived as a "threat" and "market forces" ended up to "control the planet". The risk is the "destruction of that conception which is by now consolidated and stands at the basis of democracy and progress".

To avoid it, "a global democracy must be built, in which a world democratic government will assist a number of local institutions" and "where an aware and wise use of new technologies will lead to gratuitousness and abundance in a fairer world". With regards to welfare, Emanuele deems it necessary to "relaunch that inextricable link between Rules of law and welfare state, between market and solidarity, on which the social European model is based". To overcome the crisis and fight the precariousness of employment, Emanuele brings forward a proposal: "assign a primary role to the no profit sector in the solution of economic problems linked to the evolution and renewal of welfare". A new formula that makes the such sector, "together with the State and private subjects, the third subject (or third pillar) which is the protagonist of a new welfare community that will fully substitute the old welfare state".