NAPLES - Too often we are used to considering the South as the land that has had so much wasted funding, that doesn’t give the people work, that is a privileged home to organised crime. This representation is not the truth; surely public money is also spent badly in the North, and it is now well known how criminal organisations have also spread themselves throughout the North. The South has to be considered in its complexities to appreciate the full picture.

  Mass media, or communication in general, must begin to convey a more truthful depiction of the South, despite the North, and arguably the whole of Europe, continuing to consider the land of the South an obstacle to the progressive development of Italy and Europe.

  What really is the South?

  It is a living reality, in turmoil, always on the move, it is an immense sea shaken by waters always ready to change shape, to be overwhelmed and to overwhelm. And this movement, of such positivity, is the form that gives substance to the creation of cultural, artistic, social and economic assets, through which the South can show its capacity to propel itself forward on a new path.

  Already re-discovering in our memory the places of the South that intellectuals of the Grand Tour visited and loved, for the seeds of understanding that were sown by men of great culture, and the great legacy of Magna Graecia, must acquire more and more the knowledge that the South can resist as well as design.

  I am convinced that through structural action, investment in education, a more scrupulous education in law, a greater responsibility of political and administrative organisations, the South is capable of opening itself to a perspective that can overcome the inequality generated by the unification of the North and South, that gave life to the famous Southern Question, which is still deep rooted today.

  The South must, and I think it can, overcome the inferiority complex that makes it feel eternally last in any development. It must feel part of a community, in a manner which will force the towns of the North to think again on the idea that the South is a hindrance to growth.

  Innovative policies, financial organisation, infrastructure, cohesion, investment in health, transport, services, education and the capacity to make use of the excellent geographic location - these are the central ideas that must make the South into a driving force.

  The South is alive and it will be so in a pro-European manner.

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