Basically, The Times of London agrees with The New York Times' recent dirge, while Italians reach "new heights of hysteria" (Umberto Eco).
Here are some of the main points raised by the Times' Richard Owen in his article:
1) "There is a sense of national angst in Italy as 2007 comes to a close. A defining moment came this week when, for the first time, Spain overtook Italy in terms of living standards. Greece is now breathing down Italy’s neck. The self-lacerating mood goes far beyond prices and incomes, reaching into the heart of Italy’s debate with itself over soul and identity."
2) "At home, Italians are consumed with a sense of domestic decline. “When an entire country goes into crisis over the ‘who are we and where are we going’ debate, it means we are reaching new heights of hysteria,” the writer Umberto Eco said. “This explosion of provincialism is truly painful. Personally I feel depressed.”
3) "So do many of his fellow countrymen. There is a sense that while the past is Italy’s glory, it is also its prison, with politics and business dominated by a gerontocracy and the younger entrepreneurs and politicians held back."
4) "Even the arts are struggling: although there are fine Italian film directors, there is none to match Fellini or Visconti, and Monica Bellucci, for all her beauty, is no Sophia Loren (in any case she lives in Paris)."
5) "A book on Italy’s cocooned elite, La Casta (The Caste), a runaway bestseller this year, pointed out that Italy had the highest number of official chauffeur-driven cars in Europe, and that the presidential palace, the Quirinal, cost four times as much to run as Buckingham Palace."
6) "A “jobs for life” mentality prevails, with jobs allocated not on merit but through a network of mutual favours and family ties known as raccomandazione. Some younger Italians are prepared to take short-term contracts, which is part of the Prodi Government’s modernisation programme, but Italy’s powerful trades unions have mobilised millions of protesters against what they call “precarious labour”. Last month hospitals closed for a day over short-term contracts, and this month lorry drivers brought the economy grinding to a halt with a three-day strike."
7) "The workforce at Alitalia, itself a symbol of the Italian malaise, is threatening a Christmas strike over the proposed sale of the troubled national airline to Air France-KLM. Even La Scala opera house in Milan is disrupted regularly by industral unrest. “Italy needs a Margaret Thatcher,” Francesco Caltagirone, one of Italy’s top entrepreneurs, said yesterday. “We need rigour and deregulation, a leader who will force Italians to make sacrifices.”
8) "Even the Italian nuclear family, once the bulwark (along with the Catholic Church) of Italian society, is in decline, with growing divorce rates, a low birthrate and the rise of single parenthood. The family still provides a haven for young Italians, many of whom live at home until they are 30 — but this, too, holds Italy back, as those who should be carving a niche for themselves opt instead for Mamma’s cooking and laundry services. Many do so because they cannot afford to make their own way."
9) "Eleven per cent of Italian families live under the poverty line, and the middle class is feeling the pinch too. This week Mr Prodi’s wife, Flavia, had to intervene when a well-dressed woman in a fur coat accosted her husband outside Palazzo Chigi, the Prime Minister’s residence, accusing him of “ruining us all”."
10) "Even the luxury sector, for which Italy is renowned with names such as Gucci, Armani and Versace, is feeling the squeeze as orders drop. Globalisation and cheap competition from Asia are undermining traditional exports such as textiles."
11) "The last straw for many was the news that Spain had overtaken them in terms of GDP per capita. According to the European Union statistics office, Eurostat, Spain’s GDP per capita climbed to 5 per cent above the 27-member EU average last year, from 3 per cent above the previous year. Italy moved in the opposite direction, with the figure falling to 3 per cent above from 5 per cent. Spain already has its sights on the next goal. Mr Zapatero, welcoming the news, added that the country must match the economy of France."
12) "Italy, says Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the head of Fiat and the employers’ federation Confindustria, “has not only come to a halt, it is going backwards. The problem is not only that we lack investment in research and development, it is also that every Italian looks out for himself, not for the common good.”
13) "The result is that Italians are the least happy people in Europe, according to a poll conducted for the University of Cambridge by Luisa Corrado, of the University of Rome. Danes turned out to be the happiest. Tellingly, in Denmark 64 per cent said that they trusted their parliament. In Italy it was only 36 per cent."
14) "After the Second World War, millions of Italians emigrated in search of a better life. The movement is now the other way, with nearly four million immigrants in Italy. “The problem is that a country like Spain sees immigrants as useful workers, whereas in Italy the headlines tell us they are all criminals who go round robbing and stabbing Italians,” Carlo Bastasin, an economist, said."
15) "Italian-Spanish rivalry is a needle match, and some Italians fear that their country’s decline, and the rise of Spain, means that Madrid will carry more weight than Rome around the world. Ronald Spogli, the US Ambassador to Rome, gave warning this week that Italy “risks a diminished international role” as well as slipping down the list of American global business partners. “America’s best friends are its business partners,” he observed, noting that US investment in Italy was about $17 billion (£8.5 billion), while in Spain it was nearly $50 billion."
Trying times
— 0% population growth rate
— 42.5 median age, compared with 38.5 in Britain
— one in five Italians is over 65
— 1.29 children born per woman. 2.1 needed to maintain population
— 120 days lost each year to strike action per 1,000 employees from 2001 to 2005, compared with 26 in Britain
— 20th place on Human Development Index, the UN measure of factors such as education, wealth and life expectancy, four places below Britain and seven below Spain. Italy dropped three places in the past year
— 7% unemployment rate, higher than 76 countries, including Romania, Nigeria, Cambodia and Ukraine
— 106% public debt as proportion of GDP, the sixth-highest in the world, higher than Zimbabwe
Sources: UN, CIA, National Statistics
Read more: "La dolce vita turns sour as Italy faces up to being old and poor" by Richard Owen, The London Times
Related news: ""Italy is an exquisite corpse", says The New York Times"
Recent Comments