The Real Heroes! The Italian entrepreneurs who keep the country afloat every day.

When we talk about Made in Italy , we immediately think of wine, fashion, design, mechanics, agri-food, furniture, technology, tourism and the thousands of Italian products known throughout the world.

But behind every product, behind every brand, and behind every company, there is almost always someone who, at some point in their life, decided to take a risk.

An entrepreneur.

A person who has invested money, time, skills, and often a significant portion of their personal wealth to build something.

So it's worth saying clearly:

The true heroes of the Italian economy are also our entrepreneurs

Not because they're all perfect.

Not because those who do business should automatically be considered better than others.

But without someone willing to undertake, invest and take risks, there is no real economy capable of creating employment and widespread wealth .

The company is not an abstract entity.

Behind a company there are people.

Someone has to find customers.

Someone who needs to invest.

Someone who has to pay suppliers, employees, banks, energy, insurance, consultants and taxes.

Someone who, when a crisis comes, can't just turn off the lights and walk away.

He has to find a solution.

Before the entrepreneur's salary come many other salaries

This is an aspect that is too often forgotten.

Every month, the entrepreneur must guarantee the salaries of his employees regardless of whether customers have paid on time, the market is growing, or the company has had a difficult month.

An employee normally knows his salary.

The entrepreneur knows above all the deadlines .

And when something goes wrong, he, along with his family and partners, is often the first to bear the financial consequences.

Being an entrepreneur means living with risk.

It means making decisions today whose results will perhaps be seen in three or five years.

It means hiring people without having absolute certainty that the market will continue to grow.

It means purchasing machinery, building factories, planting vineyards, developing products, opening international markets, and investing in your own company.

Without businesses there is no employment

It's a basic economic reality, but sometimes it seems almost forgotten.

The state can create public employment.

But to finance public services, healthcare, schools, infrastructure, pensions and public administration , the economy must first produce wealth .

And a fundamental part of this wealth comes from businesses and the people who work there.

The real economy arises when someone produces something that someone else is willing to buy.

An agricultural enterprise produces.

A winery transforms grapes into wine and brings that wine to international markets.

A mechanical company builds components.

A food company processes raw materials.

A technology company develops software.

A manufacturing company exports products.

A hotel brings tourism to the area.

A family business creates jobs for generations.

It is this real economy that allows the rest of the system to function.

Made in Italy would not exist without entrepreneurs

When we celebrate Made in Italy we must remember who built it.

He was not born in a ministerial office.

It was born in the countryside, in workshops, in shops, in cellars, in laboratories and later in factories and companies.

It was built by generations of entrepreneurs and workers who transformed local skills into products capable of conquering the world.

Let's think about Italian wine.

Behind a bottle there is more than just wine.

There are the winemaker, the family owner, the agronomists, the oenologists, the agricultural workers, the cellar workers, the administrative staff, the sales staff, the agents, the distributors, the logistics, the marketing and the wine tourism.

But at the origin of the economic chain there must be someone willing to invest and take on the risk of the enterprise .

The same goes for fashion, mechanics, furniture, food, and practically every Italian industry.

The entrepreneur cannot be considered guilty of everything

In Italy, a cultural representation of the entrepreneur has existed for too long and deserves to be overcome.

If he earns a lot, he is looked upon with suspicion.

If the company goes through a crisis, he is accused of having made a mistake.

If he hires, he must face increasing responsibilities and obligations.

If you invest, you often encounter complex procedures.

If he sells the company, some people think he's simply "cashing in," perhaps forgetting the forty years of work it took to build it.

Of course, there are excellent entrepreneurs and incompetent entrepreneurs, just as happens in any professional category.

Responsibilities must exist.

The rules must be respected.

Workers must be protected.

Taxes must be paid.

But responsibility cannot mean turning those who create businesses into permanent targets of the system .

Taxation and bureaucracy: the problem isn't just how much you pay

A modern country needs taxes.

The problem arises when regulatory complexity, bureaucracy, uncertainty, administrative times and constant changes in the rules are added to the fiscal burden.

For a business, time is money.

Every hour spent understanding a seemingly simple process is an hour lost to customers, products, innovation, and international development.

The real question should therefore be:

How much could Italy grow if we freed up some of the entrepreneurial energy currently absorbed by bureaucracy?

Behind the entrepreneur there is almost always a family

This aspect is particularly evident in the Italian manufacturing sector.

Many of our companies are family businesses.

This means that behind a company there are often generations of the same family.

The founder.

The children.

The grandchildren.

People who have lived together through periods of growth, economic crises, investments, debt, exports, acquisitions, and generational transitions.

When a business closes, it's not just a VAT number that disappears.

A wealth of knowledge disappears.

Skills, business relationships, customers, suppliers, jobs, experience, and sometimes even part of an area's economic identity are lost.

For this reason, safeguarding healthy businesses should be considered a collective interest.

Reward those who create value

We need to change our perspective.

Rewarding the entrepreneur does not necessarily mean granting him privileges.

It means creating conditions in which doing business is convenient, respected and possible .

It means truly simplifying bureaucracy.

Making the tax system more predictable.

Encourage investments.

Facilitate access to capital.

Support internationalization.

Helping generational transitions.

Encourage mergers and acquisitions when they allow companies to be safeguarded and developed.

Making it easier to invest in innovation, technology, and people.

And above all, it means culturally recognizing the value of those who decide to undertake.

Without entrepreneurs, who creates the jobs of tomorrow?

We can discuss wealth redistribution all we want.

But before you can redistribute it, someone has to create it.

And that's the crux of the matter.

We cannot build a society that desires more jobs, better wages, better services, and greater well-being while simultaneously viewing with suspicion those who invest in creating economic activity.

Entrepreneurs and workers should not be portrayed as two opposing armies.

They are parts of the same system.

Business needs people.

People need healthy, competitive businesses that create jobs.

As a company grows, it can hire.

When it exports, it brings wealth to the country.

When you invest, you create economic activity for other businesses.

When it generates profits, it can reinvest.

When it passes to the next generation, it retains skills and production heritage.

Defending entrepreneurs means defending Italy's future

Italy has something that many countries envy us: an extraordinary culture of doing.

We have thousands of small and medium-sized businesses capable of competing with much larger groups.

We have entrepreneurs selling wine, machinery, furniture, food, fashion, and technology all over the world.

We have territories in which a production chain built over decades represents an economic asset that is difficult to replicate.

This heritage is not eternal.

If it is not protected, valued and passed on it can disappear.

And once an entrepreneurial culture is lost, rebuilding it is vastly more difficult than preserving it.

The time has come to say thank you

Thanks to the entrepreneur who opens the company every morning.

To someone who mortgaged something to finance an investment.

To the one who during a crisis gave up his own salary to continue paying his collaborators.

To the one who exports Made in Italy.

To the one who inherited his parents' business and is trying to carry it into the future.

To the one who is building a company from scratch today.

And thanks also to the families of the entrepreneurs , who very often share risks, sacrifices and responsibilities that no one sees from the outside.

They don't ask for medals.

Above all, they ask to be able to work.

Maybe we should finally understand this.

A country that respects those who work must also respect those who create the conditions for that work to exist.

Because behind every major Italian brand, behind countless small businesses, and behind a key part of our economy, there are people who have had the courage to take risks.

They are Italian entrepreneurs.

Let's treat them as a resource to be grown, not as a problem to be fought.

Because defending Italian business means defending jobs, families, territories, skills, and, above all, the economic future of our country.