(Finance) – In the euro zone “there is a risk of recession but I would not say it is profound or destabilizing”because “the starting point is very high, with the lowest unemployment ever and a robust job market”: said the former president of the ECB Mario Draghi, speaking at a Financial Times event.
The former Italian prime minister explained that in fighting inflation “monetary policy may have been a little too slow, but there’s a reason: the supply-side shock was due entirely to the price of gas, an increase that is the result of a deliberate Russian policy.”
In any case now “inflation is falling”and the first two quarters of next year will tell if we will have a recession that anyway “it will not be destabilizing“.
As for the war in Ukraine “it was preceded by a long series of retreats from our fundamental values: the admission of Russia to the G8 despite the failure to recognize Ukrainian sovereignty, the failed promise of an intervention in Syria in the event that Assad had used gas as a weapon, Crimea, the withdrawal from Afghanistan”, said Draghi, underlining that “the lesson that can be drawn from this is that we must never compromise on our fundamental values”, on which the EU was built that is, peace, democracy, freedom, national sovereignty”.
“What we cannot do is sit still, without reacting. We have discovered that what we had taken for granted for many years was not at all, and we must fight to defend it. But I have no doubts about the final success”, said Draghi, reiterating that “there is no alternative but to win this war”.
“In the world we are witnessing the rise of autocracies and illiberal democracies, denials of civil rights and violations of human rights. We must fight, each in our own personal sphere but also collectively, to ensure that the denial of our values does not prevail”, he Draghi concluded.