Elisabetta Casellati, Italy’s Minister for Institutional Reforms and Simplification, is presenting Italy’s reform model in the United States, with stops at the United Nations, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

In New York, Casellati met students at Columbia’s Italian Academy and then held talks with UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “The principle of generational impact assessment is something entirely new, and it is attracting great interest in Europe and here in the United States too,” the Minister said, stressing that “it is not a mere bureaucratic formality but a genuine cultural paradigm shift.” “Guterres sees us as pioneers, in the sense that this principle has never actually been put into practice anywhere in the world, even though everyone talks about it. That is something extraordinary,” she added, describing the meeting as “very, very positive.”

In Philadelphia, Casellati’s agenda featured a keynote lecture on reform at the University of Pennsylvania. She was keen to repeat that “they see us as trailblazers everywhere,” adding that the state should be judged by the quality of the responses it provides, not by the quantity of rules it produces. The Minister also quoted James Madison, one of the framers of the US Constitution, who wrote in 1788: “It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” “It is a principle that is extraordinarily relevant today,” she said.

Her last stop in the heart of the city is Gran Caffè L’Aquila on Chestnut Street. The historic café once stood in Piazza Duomo in L’Aquila, where it was named the best café in Italy, before being badly damaged in the devastating 2009 earthquake that struck the city. It has now been reborn in Philadelphia after its original owners, Stefano Biasini and Michele Morelli, teamed up with Riccardo Longo, a local restaurateur and expert in Italian regional food and wine. Casellati’s visit to the café coincided with the first day of celebrations for L’Aquila as Italian Capital of Culture 2026, attended by L’Aquila Mayor Pierluigi Biondi.