Stabilità economica e sostenibilità nel diritto internazionale
The study reconstructs the conceptual category of economic stability in its different forms (monetary, tax and financial) within the regulatory framework of international economic law, focusing, in particular, on the relative legal nature of global public good for the supply of which a plurality of public and private subjects and actors (states, international economic organisations, rating agencies, sovereign funds, multinational enterprises, hedge funds) are involved, operating on bases, perspectives and aims that do not always coincide and sometimes are even in potential conflict. A public good that — because of the properties that characterize it and the positive externalities it is able to produce — is in the common interest of all the subjects of international law and its various actors that make up the international economic community to commit themselves to its pursuit and supply, thus ensuring its widespread enjoyment for the benefit of all, while at the same time preventing dangerous opportunistic phenomena of free riding and moral hazard, which are at the root of many of the situations of instability that have occurred in recent decades. The research, in following the approach whereby international economic law is an area of public international law, i.e. of the part that regulates the economic nature of relations between states and other subjects of international law and whose sources can only belong to public international law, can only follow — in dealing with the issues related to this figure — a macro -economic approach of the problems in question, by firstly reconstructing the very complex contents of the above-mentioned category for which there is no legal concept at international level. We will then linger over the policies and stabilization mechanisms adopted at international and european level to overcome the current serious economic uncertainty, most of which are inspired by a strict conditionality. Solutions that have entailed and still entail significant costs if we consider the social repercussions that those choices have determined. Inevitably, many doubts and critical issues have been raised not only about the effective compatibility of those instruments with regard to the protection and promotion of economic and social human rights, but also about the limitations they have imposed on states, especially those most in need of economic and financial support in terms of exercising their (economic) sovereignty. This has also raised the question of how to reconcile democratic methods and technocratic solutions, especially when certain choices that have a decisive impact on the lives of individuals and the various national communities have been taken — partly because of the urgency of the moment — within fora and decision-making centers that lack effective democratic legitimacy. However, burden sharing that the production of the stability good imposes can only take place — as the study tries to demonstrate - through cooperative and multilateral strategies and based on the principle of differential treatment between developed and less developed countries, a concept that strongly influences international economic law. In fact, it reflects the need to consider not only the different material conditions that characterize the numerous situations involved, through a "gradation" of the obligations incumbent on them or through a better contextualization of these obligations, but also and above all it intends to recognize the different level of responsibility of the various countries and economic actors in determining the conditions of economic instability and the direct and consequential damages that can derive from the latter situation for the international economic order considered as a whole. Succeeding in implementing this aspect and, at the same time, combining economic reasons — especially those related to the balance of public accounts — with social reasons related to the defence of human rights is a very important challenge for states, for the international community and for humanity as a whole. The need to go beyond gross domestic product and other economic variables that work around that figure to measure economic growth, development in general and, above all, the well-being of a society, is becoming increasingly necessary without, however, chasing utopian models of happy degrowth. In fact, the use of new indicators and the achievement of new goals and targets as set out in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development go in this direction. For these reasons, the study, in reconstructing the legal dimension of the principle of sustainable development, wants to emphasise how it can represent an opportunity to come to a method that is used to achieve an effective balance between political and economic interests and social interests, in some cases, as noted, opposed to each other. It expresses not only a new vision in terms of behaviour and method of action, but above all it can represent the means by which to reach a fair compromise at international legal level between the need to ensure a stable economic and financial system and the defence of the economic and social rights of the person, at least of those rights considered essential.This is the only way to prevent new crises and above all to protect the interests of future generations, as the Brundtland Report — which has given impetus to the principle of sustainable development — urges us to do.
