1. 9WINTER 2014/2015
I T A L Y
ROME—Remember the Belpaese, that quiet, sunny, relaxing dream des-
tination for tourists. It may no longer live up to those distant memories.
This may sadly be the same for much of today’s Italy, which all too often
bears a stronger resemblance to H.G. Wells’s sci-fi classic The Time Machine. In
Wells’s story, an English gentleman travels through time and ends in a distant
future where society has divided into two new races. The Eloi, the descendants
of the leisured classes, have become child-like androgynous creatures, weak and
unable to fend for themselves. Their lives of leisure are enjoyed only at the cost
of premature death, at the hands of the cannibalistic Morlocks. The Morlocks,
9
Italy’s Secret Glue
F R A N C E S C O G A L I E T T I
PalazzoChigi
PRIME MINISTER AND PARTY LEADER

2. 10 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL
E U R O P E D I V I D E D
descendants of the working classes long-
ago driven into subterranean factories, have
degenerated into troglodytes, emerging at
night to prey on the hapless Eloi.
Today’s Italy is not yet at the Morlocks
vs. Eloi stage, but the cleavage between re-
formists on the one hand and radicals and
anti-establishment voters on the other has
never been greater. Gone are the taboos of
the baby boomers’ genera-
tion, including the sanctity
of the European experiment
and its currency, the euro. As
of the writing of this article,
the early November Euro-
barometer, a public opinion
survey conducted by the
European Commission, con-
firms that Italy is Europe’s
most Eurosceptical country.
An astonishing 47 percent of
the population considers the
euro a “negative element” in
Italian society.
ITALY’S ELOI
On the last weekend of
October, the Leopolda, a
youngish, hackathon-like
event took place in Florence, and attracted
a great deal of attention from the domestic
media community. Over the past two years,
the Leopolda has quickly become the flag-
ship get-together of Matteo Renzi, formerly
the Tuscan capital’s mayor and since Febru-
ary, both prime minister and leader of the
Democratic Party. Scores of flamboyant fi-
nanciers and industrialists—such as Oscar
Farinetti, founder of the luxury gourmet
empire Eataly—made their way to this cosy
Tuscan Davos to worship Renzi and be seen.
London-based investor Davide Serra made
the headlines by asserting that the right to
strike by public sector employees should be
restricted.
A political wunderkind, Renzi is a young
and energetic leader with a keen understand-
ing of media and spin, and a knack for po-
litical cleansing. Like a hermit crab, Renzi
hollowed out Italy’s largest
center-left party, the Demo-
crats, and turned it into his
nest. He then signed a pact
with former arch-enemy
Silvio Berlusconi—now his
greatest ally when it comes
time to crush friendly fire
from the Democrats’ own
backbenches—andembarked
on a wild ride. Renzi’s per-
sonal and political popular-
ity is extraordinarily high,
far above the abysmal levels
of other left-wing European
leaders like France’s François
Hollande. In the May 2014
EU elections, Renzi man-
aged to lift his Democrats
to heights Italy’s left has
never seen (40.8 percent)—nearly doubling
the showing of the other leading leftist party,
Movimento 5 Stelle [M5S] at 21.1 percent.
Berlusconi’s Forza Italia was a distant third
at 16.8 percent, while the two junior mem-
bers of the government never got out of the
single digits, with Mario Monti’s Scelta Eu-
ropea all but obliterated at a miserable 0.7
percent.
Despite his unrivaled leadership, Renzi
seems keen on having some enemies—a not
Francesco Galietti is a former senior advisor to the Italian Minister of Finance and the
CEO of Policy Sonar, a Rome-based political risk consultancy firm.
from the point
of view of social
cohesion and
order, it is
better to have
loud and noisy
movements
sitting in
parliament than
having them
outside the
institutions in
the streets.

3. 11WINTER 2014/2015
I T A L Y
so easily attainable goal with a big-tent coali-
tion and the main opposition led by someone
who publicly fawns over you. So far, Renzi
has exchanged fusillades with labor unions,
magistrates, business lobbies, and regional,
and local power brokers—not to mention
his own party backbenchers. Lately, Renzi
has been widening his targets. At times it is
tempting to think he is really just trying to
make sure Italians perceive and feel that he is
a neighborly David doing combat with one
Goliath after another.
THE MORLOCKS
For all the fire in his belly, Renzi vastly under-
estimatedthesituationoftheeconomyandits
place in a rapidly disintegrated euro system,
not to mention the context of a rising tide of
Italy’s anti-politics movement. On the last
weekend of October, some one million people
associated with Confederazione Generale Ital-
iana del Lavoro [CGIL], Italy’s leftist worker
union, took to the street in Rome to march
against the government’s labor reforms. Most
of the CGIL protesters appeared to be retired
workers—a stark contrast to the youth-dom-
inated Leopolda, taking place simultaneously
in Florence.
Earlier this year, in April, thousands took
to the street in Rome to march against aus-
terity measures. Despite a massive deploy-
ment of security forces, at least 80 people,
both police and protesters, got badly injured
as street battles broke out, with rocks flying
and police launching pepper spray. Blasts and
sirens could be heard across Rome as a splin-
ter group of masked protesters launched fire-
crackers, eggs, and rocks at policemen, who
defended themselves with shields. One pro-
tester had his hand blown off by a firecracker
he was poised to throw, and at least six people
were arrested.
For those who lived through Italy’s trou-
bled 1970s there remain vivid memories of
the shape of extra-parliamentary movements,
and the potential threats they pose to insti-
tutions. Indeed, any veteran of the Ministry
of Interior will have no problem admitting
that, from the point of view of social cohe-
sion and order, it is better to have loud and
noisy movements sitting in Parliament than
having them outside the institutions in the
streets. Also, while the protests—and terror
attacks— of the 1970s had very clear targets,
the targets of today’s protests are scarcely as
predictable.
GRANDPA TO THE RESCUE
As a large cash-strapped Western country
with a bloated welfare state and rapidly wid-
ening differences between old and new gen-
erations, Italy seems next in line for a major
intergenerational conflict. Italians born in
1970, who are about 44 now, will pay 50
percent more in taxes as a percentage of their
lifetime income than those born in 1952, ac-
cording to research from the Bank of Italy and
the University of Verona. The research also
found they will receive half the pension ben-
efits that Italy’s 60-somethings are getting or
are poised to get.
Yet Renzi, who has made a reputation for
waging war against older generations’ privi-
leges, is thus far shying away from cutting
pensions. This is probably because the politi-
cal cost would be too high to bear for the gov-
ernment. Moreover, amid Italy’s record-high
unemployment, which still scarcely rivals
such basket cases as Spain, Italy’s traditional
famiglia remains an extraordinarily powerful
informal safety net, as Italian grandpas share
theirmoneywithunemployedgrandchildren.
How long this can last is the leading
question that may help define Italy’s place in
a struggling, if still united Europe. And if it
cannot hold together, is any other European
nation or group in a position to come to its
rescue? l