One year after PM Renzi came to power and three governments since Berlusconi, Italy is still depressed, thanks to unending austerity programmes, writes Leopoldo Nascia (translated from the original Italian by Tom Gill) Seven years of crisis and three and half years of the political shocks they have brought, in succession, the governments Mario Monti, Enrico […]
Posts Tagged ‘Italy’
The honeymoon is over for Italian PM Mateo Renzi
Nov 15th, 2014 by Tom Gill.Thousands took to the streets of Milan and other cities on Friday in the first of union-led protests that will culminate in a general strike next month. At issue is the government’s labour counter-reforms that will make it easier for firms to fire workers, adding to the growing ranks of the precariat in the Eurozone’s […]
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EU, the Grand Coalition and austerity. Where does Italy’s Renzi stand?
Jul 14th, 2014 by Tom Gill.The choice of Juncker as the next president of the European Commission is in total continuity with the harmful policies of rigor imposed in recent years by the Troika. The Italian prime minister on the one hand seems to beat his fists against the diktats of Berlin, on the other hand make us believe – […]
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The plot to topple Berlusconi
May 21st, 2014 by Tom Gill.Much as many were relieved to see the back of Silvio Berlusconi as Italy’s PM during the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2011, the revelations by Tim Geithner should have all democrats including those on the Left deeply worried. EU officials approached the former US Treasury Secretary in November of that year with a plan to overthrow the billionaire media […]
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Blairites, Valls and Renzi, offer little hope for Eurozone
Apr 23rd, 2014 by Michael Meacher.Valls and Renzi, the new prime ministers of France and Italy respectively, have made clear their respect for Blair and their intention to follow his example. That’s bad news for the Eurozone and for the EU in general. Blairism is not an economic ideology, but rather a style of leadership that is far more about […]
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Italy: Renzi’s pre-election coup
Apr 20th, 2014 by Tom Gill.Put more money in ordinary people’s pockets to boost household spending while taxing banks and axing military and other wasteful spending: sounds like a political coup and it was one Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi pulled off consummately on Friday. Renzi’s cabinet passed a decree to reduce taxes for those earning between 8,000 and 26,000 euros […]
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How PM Matteo Renzi’s ‘Jobs Act’ will sink Italy
Apr 6th, 2014 by Tom Gill.Italy’s new PM, Matteo Renzi, has pledged to slash the country’s record unemployment with his American-branded ‘Jobs Act’. But his labour reforms, which will see short term job contracts extended for up to 3 years, are more of the same medicine applied since the turn of the 1990s that have been such bad news for […]
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Europe’s debt – a con-trick binding the people to banks
Jan 10th, 2014 by Tom Gill.This article was translated by Tom Gill based on the original in Italian at Il Fatto Quotidiano by Loretta Napoleoni. From this year Italians have a 45 billion-euro–a-year bill to pay under the EU Fiscal Compact, a budgetary straightjacket binding Rome to 20 years of economically and socially lethal spending cuts and tax rises. It’s time to […]
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Is it all over for Silvio?
Oct 6th, 2013 by Tom Gill.Is it all over for Silvio? This question has been asked repeatedly over the past twenty years since the billionaire media magnate entered Italian politics. Today the answer has never looked more like a Yes. On Wednesday the former prime minister was forced into a humiliating u-turn as plans to topple the government by withdrawing his party’s […]
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Italy’s centre-left is dead, long live the Italian Left!
Apr 29th, 2013 by Tom Gill.The ‘grand coalition’ between the Democratic Party and Berlusconi’s right-wing People of Liberty party means it’s time to say goodbye to the ‘centre-left’ and hello to a new Italian Left, says Marco Sferini. For the first time after the death of the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party , the bourgeois forces find themselves […]
