Forum on Inequality and Diversity (ForumDD)

The Forum on Inequality and Diversity is an alliance of active citizens’ organizations and researchers aimed at producing and disseminating research, policy proposals and “methods for decision making” which can enhance social and environmental justice, defined as sustainable substantive freedom. It was launched in February 2018 and now counts more than 110 members and project partners. It relies on financing from some Foundations and it collected 80 thousand euros through a crowd-funding closed in October 2022. The Forum operates through advocacy, alliances with social and labour organizations, a heated and informed dialogue with public institutions and pilot projects at local level.
A video and some slides present our mission and vision.

The Italian website (daily updated) contains all the information and our Reports and policy proposals. Some material is available in English in this section. Among others:

A strategy for a fairer future (May 2020);
The proposal for Works and in-Company Citizenship Council (Feb 2021);
A critical comment on Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (May 2021);
A feedback on EC proposal of a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (May 2022);
The proposal for Universal Inheritance and Taxation of Lifetime Inherited Advantage (June 2022);
A comment after Italian political elections (Sept 2022);
The proposal for a permanent EU science-driven public infrastructure that would perform both biomedical research and development (September 2022);
“Pills of Hope” – ForumDD speech at FEPS “Recovery Watch. Public Conference on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan” – VIDEO (October 2022);
“Pills of Hope – Priorities for Left Wing Politics” – A contribution to the Progressive Post (October 2022);
A seminar that offers the opportunity to present to the Italian public the first results of the “Recovery Watch”– promoted by the FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) in partnership with FES and IEV and with the support of Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità, and to understand how the recovery and resilience plans will shape the transformation of our society (December 2022);
The study ‘Mapping of Long-term Public and Private Investments in the Development of Covid-19 Vaccines‘, which was commissioned by the COVI committee, was presented in the European Parlament by its authors (Prof. Massimo FLORIO (University of Milan and CSIL), Assistant Prof. Simona GAMBA (University of Milan) and Chiara PANCOTTI (Senior Researcher CSIL) on Thursday, 23 March 2023 and has been streamed here (March 2023);
The launch of the campaign and the documentary “Health as a Common Good” to bring to the attention of MEPs the need to truly learn from the Pandemic in the EU commitment to public research and to raise awareness among all citizens on such a crucial issue, in support of the ForumDD proposal to create a European public Research & Development infrastructure and delivery organisation for medicines (June 2023);
The comment after the approval of the Report on Lessons Learned from the Covid-19 Pandemic and Recommendations for the Future where the European Parliament recommends to the Commission and to the Member States the creation of a European public Research & Development infrastructure and delivery organisation for medicines and vaccines (July 2023).
The comment on the deletion of an independent study commissioned by the European Parliament from the institutional website that highlights the current misalignment between the priorities of the pharmaceutical industry and public health objectives. ForumDD has requested to MEPs to make clear the reasons behind this decision and to make sure that no interference by pharmaceutical industry has taken place (November 2023).
Forum on Inequality and Diversity has written a letter to all ENVI committee’s MEPs, who are discussing a draft report on the review of European pharmaceutical legislation to ask them to support the proposal of a European Medicines Facility that would aim at establishing the health priorities of the EU, directing the research and development of medicines, with particular attention to those not sufficiently covered by the private sector (February 2024).
The Forum on Inequality and Diversity has launched a set of proposals to help bring the European Union out of the stalemate by updating its mission in the direction of social and environmental justice. They are presented in the book “Quale Europa” published by Donzelli and edited by Elena Granaglia and Gloria Riva. The Forum is engaged in a journey through Italy to discuss the book in more than 80 meetings organized by local civic organizations (March 2024).
The comment on the decision of a group of fifty MEPs from different parties to support an important amendment to the European pharmaceutical legislation regulation, that revives the creation of a Public european infrastructure for vaccine, medicines and biomedical innovation, a proposal ForumDD has been advocating since before the pandemic (April 2024).
A turn in conventional wisdom and common sense is necessary for the success of public and collective actions aimed at achieving greater social justice. The arts can play and have played throughout history an important role in influencing common sense. How does this influence take place? What does it need to be lasting? What specific role are contemporary arts playing or could play? These questions are addressed in a draft report “Common Sense, Social Justice and the Arts” (currently under revision according to the results of the Genova Seminar in April 2024).
We have taken seriously the report The Future of European Competitiveness, known as the “Draghi Plan” and we have published today our analysis that contains a critical assessment of the Plan: it is not good for Europe, it does not enhance its strengths, it promotes the kind of growth that neglects social justice. In short, the Plan’s strategy is led astray both by the choice of the USA as the recurring standard of reference, without grasping its weaknesses, economic instability and recent developments, and by the parallel disregard for Europe’s specificities and strengths and its actual geopolitical opportunities. The Plan is also biased by not taking people’s point of view of the people and by an ancillary view of the social dimension, which accentuates the divide between the economy and society as if we had learnt nothing over the last decades. These weaknesses condition the remedies, which configure a strategy that would harm Europe. We believe there is an urgent need to use the Plan, which has already penetrated deeply into the European agenda as reflected in the Mission Letters to the designated members of the EU Commission, to open a public, informed and open debate on the future of the Union (here is the executive summary of our analysis). At the same time,The Forum on Inequality and Diversity offers an alternative vision with its book “Which Europe” edited by Elena Granaglia and Gloria Riva (Donzelli, 2024) addressing thirteen themes and presenting several specific proposal to address the challenges for the EU and a clear-cut vision of what Europe is about. The book is now available in English here.
We have announced that we are leaving X because it has been turned by its owner Elon Musk into a propaganda machine for his power objectives, which is a threat to democracy.

The highlighted words are linked to a “Wiki-Forum”,
a glossary that provides their explanations that can be read only in Italian.

Italian society is characterised by:

1) High and rising inequalities, mounting fear for the future and growing anger among those who feel left behind.

2) A widespread vitality in civil society, business and the public sector, which also produces a multitude of innovative practices to fight inequality but fails to produce systemic changes.

The FORUM aims to design public policies and collective actions in order to reduce inequalities and enhance everyone’s substantive freedom (diversity). It also aims to build consensus and commitment towards these proposals.

Thanks to the coalition between civil society organizations and researchers, knowledge and sentiments embodied in a multitude of practices can help turn fear and anger into progress towards a fairer society.

Our Project

In the past thirty years Italy, together with all Western countries, has experienced high and increasing inequalities: economic (income, private wealth, labour market outcomes, poverty), social (access to, quality and trust in essential public services) and recognition (recognition of the role, values, culture and aspirations of individuals and/or groups). These inequalities are still particularly hard on women and threaten the future of younger generations.

Inequalities have a marked territorial dimension and give rise to divides between urban peripheries and town-centres and between rural (or inner) and urban areas. Inequalities and environmental degradation compound one an other and give rise to underdevelopment traps. (These within-country divides also exist and are increasing within non-Western countries, whose income inequality gap with Western countries has decreased in recent years).

1. Facts

In Italy, as in all Western countries, increasing inequalities have generated injustice and have had a negative impact on development. Fear, resentment and anger have increased among the lowest, second lowest and vulnerable sections of society – left behind by the top and the resilient sections. This has given rise to an authoritarian dynamic among disadvantaged individuals and in penalized territories: intolerance for diversity, lack of trust in institutions and “experts”, demands for closed communities and tough authorities.

In Europe, this dynamic threatens the very existence of the European Union, because many of its citizens consider the EU as one of the causes of inequality instead of as a source of justice and a fairer society.

2. Consequences

In Italy, as in all Western countries, rising inequalities are not un unavoidable effect of changes beyond our control: technological change; globalization; migration; climate change. Rather, they are the result of a combination of political, economic and cultural choices that came with these changes: a U-turn in public policies; a loss of negotiating power of labour; and a change in “common sense” (what society tends to consider normal or appropriate).

All these changes started at the end of the 1970s and have progressively accelerated.

3. Causes

It is therefore possible to reduce inequalities by adopting new public policies, by rebalancing powers and by changing the common sense.

Following Article 3 of the Italian Constitution, the goal should be to “remove the barriers that de facto restrict citizens’ freedom and equality”. The aim is to enhance the “full development of each and every person” (diversity) and the “participation of workers” in order to ensure substantive freedom for all. This is the opposite of restricting freedom and merit, imposing duties and increasing State’s invasiveness, which is how many people nowadays understand the words “equality” or “tackle inequalities”.

Achieving these results calls for a new compromise among different sections of society. The knowledge and sentiments needed for such compromise can be drawn from the multitude of social, private and public practices existing today in Italian society.

4. What can be done?

Civil society organizations and trade unions need to work together and with researchers. We need coalitions capable of mixing languages, building a shared interpretation of facts and a shared vision of the desired future, evaluating practices, elaborating proposals, testing deliberative methods, and spreading knowledge. And we need these coalitions to convince people to call for a heated, informed, open, and reasonable debate (conflict) with “the others”, in order to reach agreements and forcefully demand that they be implemented by people democratically endowed with representation and power.

The Forum is one of these coalitions. It aims to transform the multitude of practices into systemic changes, by designing public policies and collective actions to reduce inequalities and building consensus around them.

5. Our Coalition

The Forum will focus on four dimensions of economic, social and recognition inequalities:

• Wealth inequalities: ownership, control and access to private and common wealth;

• Income and labour inequalities: poverty, income inequality and inequality in the access to the labour market, earnings and quality of jobs;

• Inequalities in the access and quality of essential services;

• Inequalities in the participation to the democratic process.

These inequalities are at the core of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development that aims at social, economic and environmental development for current and future generations (sustainable substantive freedom). This Agenda should animate the European strategy.

6. Four Themes

To start with, the Forum will focus on private and common wealth inequalities. For two reasons. First, it has grown dramatically in the past thirty years. Second, through its impact on all other inequalities, like Penelope’s shroud in the Odysseus, it unravels overnight what welfare policies build during the day:

• It reduces/nullifies the ability to react to unforeseen events.
• It reduces/nullifies the capability to refuse unfair or degrading jobs.
• It reduces the capacity to protect savings and yield a return from them.
• It deters/prevents people from realising their entrepreneurial skills.
• It increases the risk of living in socio-economically neglected environments and of contributing to creating them.

Redistribution is not enough. We need to act on the pre-distribution of wealth, i.e. to fight inequalities where wealth is created, in the market and in primary distribution, by orienting technological change and by reforming institutions.

7. Priority: Wealth Inequality

Rising inequality in ownership, property and control over wealth is also bound to have a negative impact on general welfare and productivity growth.

There is then spacious room for public policies and collective actions that pursue both equality and efficiency goals. The Forum will explore this spacious room thus increasing the opportunity for compromise between different sections of society and favouring the possibility of change. The Forum will also work to design and promote interventions whenever wealth inequalities have socially unacceptable effects.

8. Priority: Wealth Inequality

The Forum’s interpretation of facts and vision of social development will be translated into concrete actions that will take place during 2018, its start-up year:

Launching research-action projects: by looking at existing policies/practices against inequality, their effectiveness will be assessed and innovative proposals for public policies and collective actions will be designed;

• Building an “Atkinson program” for Italy;

• Spreading the Forum’s vision, data and information;

• Experimenting methods to convince and to deliberate;

• Running advocacy campaigns to support proposals and actions.

9. Vision and Concreteness

English

Why Forum on Inequality and Diversity leaves X by Elon Musk

We are leaving X because it has been turned by its owner Elon Musk into a propaganda machine for his power objectives, which is a threat to democracy

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

23/01/25

Contributi

The “Draghi Plan” analysis and “Which Europe?”: our vision and proposals for a fairer Europe

The ‘Draghi Plan’ is not good for Europe, does not enhance its strengths, and promotes the kind of growth that neglects social and environmental justice. This assessment emerges from our extensive critical analysis of the ‘Draghi Plan’ strategy. As shown by the Mission Letters to the Commissioners-designate, the Plan has already deeply penetrated in the European agenda. ForumDD proposes instead to use it, before it is implemented, to promote a public, informed and open debate on the future of the Union. The document is the collaborative result of a group of experts from the ForumDD and reflects the ideas and proposals of the volume, ‘Which Europe’, now available in English edited by Elena Granaglia and Gloria Riva, published by Donzelli Editore

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

24/10/24

English

“Health as Common Good. In Europe a first big step”: published the updated version of the Docu-ForumDD. The mobilisation for European public infrastructure for vaccines and medicines continues

Prossimi appuntamenti

The National Recovery and Resilience Plans: assessing to improve

On 15th December, FEPS and partners organise a public event focusing on: “The National Recovery and Resilience Plans: assessing to improve” at the CNEL in Rome. This public seminar offers the opportunity to present to the Italian public the first results of the “Recovery Watch”- promoted by the FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) in partnership with FES and IEV and with the support of Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità, and to understand how the recovery and resilience plans will shape the transformation of our society

Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità

10/11/22

HOW PLACE-SENSITIVE ARE THE NATIONAL RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE PLANS?

Giovanni Carrosio, Gloria Cicerone, Alessandra Faggian, Giulia Urso

12/2022

Download the PDF

POLICY CHALLENGES AND POLICY ACTIONS FOR A JUST CLIMATE TRANSITION

Linnea Nelli, Maria Enrica Virgillito, Andrea Roventini

12/2022

Download the PDF

English

Why Forum on Inequality and Diversity leaves X by Elon Musk

We are leaving X because it has been turned by its owner Elon Musk into a propaganda machine for his power objectives, which is a threat to democracy

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

23/01/25

Contributi

The “Draghi Plan” analysis and “Which Europe?”: our vision and proposals for a fairer Europe

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

24/10/24

English

“Health as Common Good. In Europe a first big step”: published the updated version of the Docu-ForumDD. The mobilisation for European public infrastructure for vaccines and medicines continues

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

09/08/23

Appeal: HEALTH RESEARCH AS COMMON GOOD: A PUBLIC EUROPEAN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR VACCINES, MEDICINES, AND BIOMEDICAL INNOVATION

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

13/07/2022

Download the PDF

THE ROLE OF THE RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE FACILITY IN STRENGTHENING CHILDCARE POLICIES

Francesco Corti – Christian Morabito – Tomas Ruiz – Patrizia Luongo

07/2022

Download the PDF

Contributi

“How Italy became anti-fragile”: Fabrizio Barca at The David McWilliams Podcast

The David McWilliams Podcast in the episode titled "How Italy became anti-fragile" hosts Fabrizio Barca, co-coordinator of the Forum on Inequality and Diversity

Forum on Inequality and Diversity

02/08/23