Low birth rate weighing on pensions, healthcare - Panetta

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 21 - The European Union's demographic decline risks having "negative effects on the state of pension systems, on the healthcare system, on the propensity to do business and innovate, on the sustainability of public debt", Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta said on Wednesday. In order to counter this phenomenon, "it is essential to boost human capital and increase the employment of the young and women", including through "measures favouring the arrival of regular foreign workers who constitute a rational response on an economic level, regardless of evaluations of a different nature", he added, addressing the Rimini Meeting.
    This will "need to be managed in a coordinated manner within the Union", taking into account social stability and boosting the integration of foreign citizens.
    The Bank of Italy governor went on to say that "Italy is the only country in the euro area" in which public spending due to interests on the national debt is "approximately equivalent to that on education", which shows how "high debt is weighing on the future of young generations, limiting their opportunities".
    Panetta also told the Rimini event organized by members of the Catholic activist group Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation, CL) that the European project "is now confronted with internal and external challenges" that test its "solidity and cohesion", in front of which European governments have the role of "not losing the EU's commitment towards integration and to continue the common path".
    Panetta added in his speech, which was mainly devoted to European integration, that "without a common market, per capita income in Europe today would be under one-fifth".
    The idea that the euro area can work effectively without a central fiscal capacity is "simply an illusion and must be overcome" with a common fiscal policy, said Panetta. A test for the new European legislature "will be the ability to confirm the use of common expenditure projects and to progress towards a more complete and more integrated union on both a financial and fiscal level", starting with a "reflection on the next steps" once the program NextGeneration EU expires in 2026, concluded the governor. (ANSA).