(ANSAmed) - ROME - Like the rest of the world, Italy is beginning to see signs of improvement. But ''concerns remain about the slowness and fragility of the current recovery, for the heavy impact of the recession on employment levels, which risk of being prolonged, and for the specific structural difficulties of our country''. Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, was keen to make a contribution to the congress organised by some of the country's young entrepreneurs for today and tomorrow in Capri. The congress is on the Mediterranean and its pivotal function as a ''hinge'' between Europe and the Gulf. In his analysis, Napolitano stressed that all of the ''lasting outlook for recovery are linked, in Italy especially, to the capacity the institution have to initiate reforms which are fit to overcome their weaknesses''. The Mediterranean, therefore, should be seen as a platform to unite the countries on its opposite shores, setting up those economic synergies that everyone would like to see. The Chair of the young wing of Confindustria, Federica Guidi, and ''hostess'' for the Congress, chose a metaphor, saying she pictured the Mediterranean ''as a great Bazaar where everyone could set up their own stall and ply their wares''. ''Our dream is to see a Mediterranean in twenty years time that has become a great free-trade zone without tariffs, without other barriers to trade between businesses in the various countries. Only this way will a new season be able to start for Africa: which is sorely in need of an open door to Europe''. In the view of Walter Veltroni, the Mediterranean ''has to become a new area of cooperation, stretching from the Maghreb to Turkey'' and should not be a target for ''protectionist'' policies. The former leader of Italy's Democratic Party (PD) sees ''the risk, which must be avoided, of a conflict'' which is why it is crucial that we seek ''reciprocal integration''. The Deputy Speaker of the Italian Senate, Emma Bonino, said that a common European policy towards all of the countries of the Mediterranean would not make sense because the region has a compound make-up. On relations between Europe and the Mediterranean, Bonino stressed how ''geography should be an opportunity, not an obligation''. ''It is possible to open close relations with some countries and not with others - geography is an opportunity but it should not force our hand''. (ANSAmed).