Italy has been admired by the rest of the world since the days of pomp and splendour of Roman civilisation, in virtue of several traits that have deeply affected her history: the humanistic culture, art and the successes achieved in law, architecture, painting and sculpture, music and the sciences. Italy has always been synonymous with beauty, creative imagination and artistic excellence. In the Divine Comedy, Dante was the first to coin the image of “…the fair land there where the 'Sì' doth sound”, thus indissolubly uniting our national identity and our love for beauty.

             This confident search for the beauty is part of our tradition and is still a strength of our best culture today – the culture of doing, which is happily reflected in the pages of this volume. Best of Italy, in fact, relates the successes of leading Italian companies in innovation, design, fashion and many other fields: it is a precious editorial contribution, which documents the pre-eminence of Made in Italy and Italian style in the world.

             On the level of art and culture, Italy is truly second to none. Although Italy accounts for a mere 0.6 percent of the world’s dry land, we are the foremost country in the world in terms of the number of sites that Unesco has declared to be part of the world patrimony of humanity. We have 100 thousand monuments and churches, 40 thousand historic dwellings, 3,500 museums, 2,500 archaeological sites and thousands of theatres: they account for 72 percent of the artistic assets registered for assessment in Europe and 50 percent of the assets registered in the world: a patrimony without equal.

             As far as the economy is concerned, Made in Italy products in all of their many manifestations are the most incisive and concrete card our country has to play.

             Just three years ago, an assertion of this kind would have been greeted with contempt. I recall that an important international merchant bank actually said that Italy no longer had a future as a manufacturing country. The left and various economists had the same opinion and spoke of “Italy’s decline”. Their conviction was that the era of post-industrial capitalism had begun and that finance would have become pre-eminent. Finance is of course a useful and important business, but was unfortunately already drugged at that time with the excesses of sub-prime mortgages, stock options, derivatives and hedge funds.

             Reality took it upon itself to demonstrate just how shortsighted and fallacious those convictions were. The virus of the global crisis was launched precisely by the drugged financial sector of the United States and struck the sound body of the real economy throughout the world, forcing governments, companies and families to come to terms with problems that are not easy to solve.

             Both as prime minister and interim president of the G8, which I had the honour of guiding for the third time, during the last part of 2008 and in 2009 I participated in all of the international summits called to agree upon and define “global legal standards”: the rules necessary to avoid the reoccurrence of such a serious economic crisis. These rules, proposed by Italy, constitute an injection of faith into world markets; a decisive step to defeat fear and psychological impediments that have influenced consumers so negatively in the past and continue to influence them today – even those who had nothing to fear from the crisis.

             The worst seems to be behind us now. We still can’t say when it will happen, but we already know that Italy will come through the crisis. And she’ll be able to do it sooner and better than other countries, thanks to her manufacturing system, which is the backbone of Made in Italy products.

             This confidence is founded on concrete facts, especially concerning the four manufacturing sectors of excellence that represent the “quadruple A”, the most prestigious rating in our country: Clothing and fashion, Home furnishings, Automation-mechanics and plastics, Food and wine. The statistics on commercial exchange bring out the strong, vital role of these sectors.

             The value added of fashion and home furnishings, for example, is the same as the value added of the automotive industry in Germany, while the value added of Italian mechanics is higher than that of the entire European pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, when it comes to Mediterranean foods and quality wines, Italy has the highest trade surplus in Europe.

             Our country also has another advantage: we have a strong “real” economy, not only in manufacturing, but also in tourism and agriculture. In every one of these three sectors, we rank a solid second place in Europe, in terms of the volume of business: following Germany in the manufacturing sector, Spain in tourism and France in agriculture. No other country in the European Union is as solid in these three sectors: Germany, for example, which is the most important manufacturing country, is fourth in agriculture and tourism.

             This peculiarity of Italy’s is the fruit of many virtues. The first of these is the Made in Italy trademark of our inventiveness, creative ability and the continuous aspiration to excel in strategic sectors of the real economy. These are traits that have made our companies winning enterprises in the world.

             The Fiat group is an apt synthesis of solidity and Made in Italy quality: the group has earned itself a position of absolute prominence in relaunching the auto industry in the United States, thanks to the strong innovation in their products and ecologically sustainable technologies: this is reason for pride not only for the group’s management, but for Italy as a whole.

             Other divisions of Made in Italy products are winning proposals as well. These sectors are modernising Italy, to recover lost ground after thirty years of delay in the construction of infrastructures. I refer to Made in Italy railroad construction, thanks to which we are finally part of a small worldwide club of countries that have High Speed train service. Then we have the Made in Italy of our incineration plants: scientists consider Brescia’s incineration plant to be the best one in the world from the standpoint of the environment and efficiency; this plant has become the model that the government intends to use to intervene in other Regions, after the success in Naples and the Region of Campania.

             We have always believed in the Made in Italy based on facts and not only words, because we consider it an irreplaceable asset for the Italy of tomorrow. That’s why our government has constantly dedicated protection and attention to the “quadruple A” sectors since the beginning of the crisis, the automotive industry, mechanics and home furnishings, in particular, with appropriate provisions of support.

             We trust in the future: we have laid the groundwork for banks to continue doing their job, so that enterprises will not be cut off from the flow of credit and families will not have to modify their lifestyle, giving way to pessimism and reducing their consumption out of simple fear.

             We are committed to leading Italy out of the crisis, respecting the principle of solidarity, of “people first”, without leaving anyone behind, starting from the weakest members of society. I have therefore requested all productive sectors, especially those with Made in Italy products, to work together with the government to nurture faith in the future, to turn pessimism into optimism, despair into trust and fear into hope.

             And I am sure that the Italy of Made in Italy products will come through this difficult test.