2020 will pass into the annals of history as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. A difficult, arduous, oppressive year, which has upset our habits and has questioned several certainties. So many lives have been broken.
Everything around us has suddenly changed, forcing us to review our personal, social, professional, and productive interactions. The lockdown months and the necessary precautionary measures also had a critical impact on the economy.
However, they have, as well, been months of resilience, thanks also to an extraordinary cohesion and collective commitment, to which everyone contributed, doing their part for the common good: individual citizens, associations, organizations, small and large companies, national and international institutions.
Science has also done its part, delivering vaccines quite quickly which, quickly inoculated to as many people as possible, in combination with the development of therapies against the disease, has helped us overcome the critical phase of the pandemic.
Through the difficulties of the pandemic, the European Union has rediscovered the spirit of its origins and promptly launched an intervention program which, without exaggeration, has been defined as a new Marshall Plan, due to the impacts it will have, not only from an economic perspective but also from a social, health and sustainability outlook of future development. It is a good plan, with many resources available: a sign of epochal change, to counter the economic crisis generated by the pandemic, with an eye to the new generations.
Thanks to the resources of this plan, therefore, we have, on one side, the possibility of improving the health structures, which the pandemic unequivocally confirmed important and urgent, so that they are always efficient, effective and in step with the times. On the other side, it will be possible to help to start the strong, expected economic recovery, potentially a real new economic miracle.
Thus, a year full of difficulties turned out also as a time rich in opportunities. The pandemic progressed transformations that were already underway and that are improving the world we live in. First of all, this is visible concerning digital transformation and the attention to sustainability, representing, today, clear priorities of what is called the "new normal".
All the above, together with the description of what our Group has done in this direction, are the contents of our Non-financial Statement, which has just been published.