Just before he left with family for their summer holidays, computer technician Roberto Robbiano fired up Facebook and posted a picture of the family’s beach-holiday destination on Sardinia. The 43-year old, his wife, 41-year-old Ersilia Piccinino, and their eight-year-old son left in the family car from their home in Voltri, heading for the car ferry from Genoa to Sardinia.
They never made it.
They plunged to their deaths — along with 40 others — when the motorway bridge crossing a suburb of Genoa collapsed on August 14. Little Samuele’s body was among the first recovered, and rescuers found a cell phone that survived the crush of a massive iron beam. There was a caller listed as “Mamma”.
The Genoa bridge tragedy, the Interior Minister Matteo Salvini charged days after the disaster, was the result of the European Union (EU) and the budgetary curbs placed on the national government in Rome. Salvini, from the League, formerly the National League, had also previously angered Brussels over his orders to turn away vessels from humanitarian organisations that had picked up hundreds of refugees from the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
“Spending that saves lives, jobs and the right to health must not be part of the rigid calculations and of rules imposed by Europe,” he said. No sooner than those inflammatory words were uttered than he stepped up even more the next day, asserting that Italy needed to be free to spend public money without the “folly” of EU constraints.
But the assertion that somehow Brussels was to blame for the Genoa tragedy was simply inaccurate, wrong and misleading as far as the European Commission was concerned. Gunter Oettinger, the EU’s budget commissioner, was quick to put the record straight, noting that Brussels had long urged the Italians to spend more on their crumbling infrastructure. What’s more, with the most recent warning came in May, mere weeks before the Genoa tragedy and while Robbiano and his family were planning that Sardinia getaway.
What’s more too, the EU pointed out, Italy received €2.5 billion (Dh10.57 billion) in direct EU budget funding for bridges and had received another €8.5 billion for its highways in the current budget from Brussels. And added to this, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development noted that between 2007 and 2015, spending on Italy’s infrastructure fell by some 62 per cent. At the same time, Italy was racking up billions in national debt. It is the second-most heavily indebted member of the 28 states that make up the EU, and for every €1 in circulation there, it owes another €1.31 to creditors.
Much of the blame for Italy’s economic malaise rests with the erratic policies of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, who’s bunga bunga spending almost brought it to the point of collapse, requiring a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the European Central Bank in later 2008 and 2009.
It was Italy’s overspending — only Greece is more heavily indebted — that was one of the key mitigating factors why all 19 nations that use the euro and the other none EU states agreed to the “Fiscal Compact”, an accord that limits their spending and borrowing.
During the election campaign leading up to the general election of March 4 this year, that eventually brought the League into power along with the populist Five-Star Movement, all the parties were united in wanting far more wriggle room under the Fiscal Compact.
That’s a tough sell in Brussels, who wants to avoid a repeat of the Eurozone debt crisis at all costs.
But the new government in Italy is intent on pushing the boundaries when it comes to freeing the financial corset imposed by the EU — and once more, Brussels is having none of it.
Last week, the Italian government agreed to a budget deficit target of 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product. The Minister for Economy, Giovanni Tria, gave way to pressure from Salvini and the Five-Star leader Luigi Di Maio to increase the deficit to pay for election promises such as a universal income, a flat tax rate and pension reforms. The effect of the spending will be to increase that debt from €1.31 to €1.33.
Unemployment in Italy is at 11 per cent and the universal basic income scheme will guarantee 6.5 million Italians will get some €780 monthly — adding €10.5 billion to Italy’s debt pile. There’s a worry too that as the budget passes through parliament — a convoluted affair — that 2.4 per cent deficit could swell to 3 per cent as politicians press for more spending on projects and infrastructure improvements in their hometowns. And they may very well point to the Genoa tragedy as a case in point for more spending.
That budget too must be presented to the European Commission by mid-October, and so far, it’s not going down well, with Valdis Dombrovskis, the EU Commission’s Vice-President noting wryly that it “does not seem to be in line with the stability and growth pact”.
Come the middle of this month, the commission will have to decide if it wants to take the unprecedented step of sending the budget back to Rome for revisions. If Rome rejects any changes, it will be on a collision course with Brussels — one that could lead to sanctions, which would set up a confrontation between the two. Already, the word “Italexit” is being uttered by nationalists on the Right in Italy.
Putting this Italian mess into a broader context, why would the EU make a deal now with the United Kingdom with more trouble looming? It would make all the more sense now for Brussels to play hardball with the government of UK Prime Minister Theresa May, teaching anyone — even the Italians — that there’s a heavy price to pay for trying the leave the EU.
