Italy's great year

For the past six months, Italians have been floating from triumph to triumph.

 

It began in May when an Italian band, Maneskin, who previously won the Festival of San Remo, won the Eurovision song contest. 

In July their men’s football team became Europe’s champions beating England at home in London’s Wembley Stadium.

In August, at the Olympics, their male sprinters astonished the sporting world, claiming gold in the 100 meters and 4 x 100 meters relay.

In October, an Italian scientist, Giorgio Parisi, shared the Nobel Prize for physics, for groundbreaking contributions to theory of complex systems.

 

Italy has meanwhile started to be governed by an internationally respected prime minister, Mario Draghi, with a huge parliamentary majority that allows him to turn his projects swiftly into law. Supported by an effective vaccination campaign, the economy is recovering strongly. On October 28th Mr Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank, forecast economic growth this year of “probably well over 6%”, though few expect Italy’s GDP to regain its pre-pandemic level until 2022, well behind America and Britain, among others. But Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, has revised its outlook for Italian debt from stable to positive, and Italians can look forward to a period in which their government will be in a position—under an obligation, indeed—to spend liberally for the first time since the days of the post-war, American-funded Marshall Plan.

Italy stands to be the biggest beneficiary in absolute terms of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery project. From the core Recovery and Resilience Facility alone, it is due to receive €191.5bn in grants and loans. Such an influx of cash cannot help but have an impact on an economy that, even before covid-19, had barely grown this century, thanks to a combination of slow growth in even the best years and big declines in the bad ones. Real GDP per person was 1% lower over the period, compared with increases of 16% in France and 24% in Germany. Oxford Economics estimates that over the next three to four years the EU’s recovery project will add on average a helpful annual 0.5 percentage points to Italian GDP growth.

Italy’s reform program is not the problem; that is ahead of schedule. In May a package was approved that simplified a wide range of bureaucratic procedures. And a shake-up of the criminal-justice system is about to be implemented. A further reform, focusing on civil justice, is in the pipeline. Officials say that legislation to promote competition is also coming soon.

The problem is with investment. The outstanding foot-draggers appear to be the ministry of tourism, which at the time of the report had yet to implement any of the six investments for which it is responsible; and the department for ecological transition, which had implemented only one.

Looking beyond the end of this year, one doubt arises. It concerns the fate of legislation after it is handed out for implementation at the sub-national level. “In Italy, the intention of policies is all too often lost in translation,” says Paolo Graziano, who teaches political science at the University of Padua. There is a shortage of the necessary project-management skills among officials charged with implementing complex programs—a shortcoming the Draghi government says it has begun to address. But another reason, says Fabrizio Tassinari of the European University Institute in Florence, is that “secondary legislation becomes hostage to vested interests, from local authorities to trade unions.”

On October 18th mayoral candidates from the Democratic Party (PD) were elected in Rome and Turin, completing a clean sweep of Italy’s biggest cities by the center-left. But the PD and its allies are weaker in the provinces. Polls continue to suggest that Italy’s next government will be a coalition dominated by two parties that have long been critical of the European Commission: the Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, which has links to neo-fascism, and the hard-right Northern League.

A significant weakness of the Italian economy is that, while taxes on labor are too high, those on property are too low. There is no real estate tax on your main residence, unless it is considered a luxury home. Mr Draghi’s government moved to adjust the balance by changing the criteria used in the land registry in a way that would have boosted the revenue from property. But he ran into determined opposition from the League’s leader, Matteo Salvini. As a result, the changes will not now come into effect until 2026; and even then, they will not be used to calculate tax liability.

Adapted from an article in The Economist, "The Mario magic"

Netflix pushes Europe toward a more common culture

Why is it so difficult to reach an agreement in Europe in helping nations in economic difficulty? The last time Europe was a unified entity was during the Roman Empire. A common language, Latin, a common currency, and commerce spread throughout most of Europe. Now, as the European Union inches toward a more unified political and economic structure, there is a need for a more blended culture and less nationalism.

How Netflix is creating a common European culture

Adapted from an article in The Economist

“BARBARIANS”, a NETFLIX drama set 2,000 years ago in ancient Germania, inverts some modern stereotypes. In it, sexy, impulsive, proto-German tribesmen take on an oppressive superstate led by cold, rational Latin-speakers from Rome. Produced in Germany, it has all the hallmarks of a glossy American drama (gratuitous violence and nudity) while remaining unmistakably German (in one episode someone swims through a ditch full of scheisse). It is a popular mix: on a Sunday in October, it was the most-watched show on Netflix not just in Germany, but also in France, Italy and 14 other European countries.

Netflix series "Barbarians"

Other successful Netflix shows seen across Europe and America include Bordertown (Finland), Cable Girls (Spain), Norsemen (Sweden), and Lupin (France).

"Cable Girls", a Spanish series

Moments when Europeans sit down and watch the same thing at roughly the same time used to be rare. They included the Eurovision Song Contest and the Champions League football, with not much in between. Now they are more common, thanks to the growth of streaming platforms such as Netflix, which has 58m subscribers on the continent. For most of its existence, television was a national affair. Broadcasters stuck rigidly to national borders. Streaming services, however, treat Europe as one large market rather than 27 individual ones, with the same content available in each. Jean Monnet, one of the EU’s founding fathers, who came up with the idea of mangling together national economies to stop Europeans from killing each other, was once reputed to have said: “If I were to do it again from scratch, I would start with culture.” Seven decades on from the era of Monnet, cultural integration is beginning to happen.

Umberto Eco, an Italian writer, was right when he said the language of Europe is translation. Netflix and other deep-pocketed global firms speak it well. Just as the EU employs a small army of translators and interpreters to turn intricate laws or impassioned speeches of Romanian MEPs into the EU’s 24 official languages, so do the likes of Netflix. It now offers dubbing in 34 languages and subtitling in a few more. The result is that “Capitani”, a cop drama written in Luxembourgish, a language so modest it is not even recognized by the EU, can be watched in any of English, French or Portuguese (or with Polish subtitles). Before, a top French show could be expected to be translated into English, and perhaps German, only if it was successful. Now it is the norm for any release.

"Bordertown" from Finland

The economics of European productions are more appealing, too. American audiences are more willing than before to give dubbed or subtitled viewing a chance. This means shows such as “Lupin”, a French crime caper on Netflix, can become global hits. In 2015, about 75% of Netflix’s original content was American; now the figure is half, according to Ampere, a media-analysis company. Netflix has about 100 productions under way in Europe, which is more than big public broadcasters in France or Germany. To operate in the EU, streaming companies are required to ensure at least 30% of their catalogue hails from the bloc—and to promote it. Buying old 1990s Belgian soap operas and hiding them in a digital cupboard does not count.

 Not everything works across borders. Comedy sometimes struggles. Whodunits and bloodthirsty maelstroms between rigid Romans and uppity tribesmen have a more universal appeal. Some do it better than others. Barbarians aside, German television is not always built for export, says one executive, being polite. A bigger problem is that national broadcasters still dominate. Streaming services, such as Netflix or Disney+, account for about a third of all viewing hours, even in markets where they are well-established. Europe is an ageing continent. The generation of teens staring at phones is outnumbered by their elders who prefer to stare at the box.

Choose your language and still see the same programs

In Brussels and national capitals, the prospect of Netflix as a cultural hegemon is seen as a threat. “Cultural sovereignty” is the watchword of European executives worried that the Americans will eat their lunch. To be fair, Netflix content sometimes seems stuck in an uncanny valley somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, with local quirks stripped out. Netflix originals tend to have fewer specific cultural references than shows produced by domestic rivals, according to Enders, a market analyst. The company used to have an imperial model of commissioning, with executives in Los Angeles cooking up ideas French people might like. Now Netflix has offices across Europe. But ultimately the big decisions rest with American executives. This makes European politicians nervous. They should not be.

An irony of European integration is that it is often American companies that facilitate it. Google Translate makes European newspapers comprehensible, even if a little clunky, for the continent’s non-polyglots. American social-media companies make it easier for Europeans to talk politics across borders. Now Netflix and friends pump the same content into homes across a continent, making culture a cross-border endeavor, too. The EU is a project just half-realized. If Europeans are to share a currency, bail each other out in times of financial need and share vaccines in a pandemic, then they do not need more nationalism but a more shared culture.