Very unhappy article in the Guardian today about the Roma situation in Italy:

Last week, Silvio Berlusconi’s new rightwing Italian administration announced plans to carry out a national registration of all the country’s estimated 150,000 Gypsies - Roma and Sinti people - whether Italian-born or migrants. Interior minister and leading light of the xenophobic Northern League, [...]

Haven’t we seen this movie before? Will it be any better this time? Can Italy afford another round of Silvi B?
I know what could make this a great term of office! Start a new campaign: Tyrolia is only Italian! Because it’s worked so well for Greece…
Update: I see that David is as enthusiastic as I [...]

The old bastard pulled it off. Seems to get fairly solid majorities in both chambers. Veltroni just conceded.
There’s was even more disgust at the political process than usual this election. Lots of scandals and Beppe Grillo rallies. Some dude ate his ballot, etc. So turnout was lower than usual this year. I gotta assume [...]

As Italians head to the polls this weekend in order to pick what will be their 62nd government in 65 years (in an election which is being held three years early to boot, due to the collapse of Romano Prodi’s outgoing administration) one odd detail seems to stand out and sum up the multitude of [...]

In less than a week Italy will be holding a general election three years ahead of schedule, but before I explain how the upcoming vote may lead to another gridlock, I believe an introduction is in order. My name is Manuel Alvarez-Rivera and I’m the webmaster of Election Resources on the [...]

Bad news for the old crook.
Through his family-controlled Fininvest empire, Berlusconi runs Mediaset, by far the biggest commercial TV broadcaster in Italy. His empire also runs the biggest national advertiser, the biggest publisher and much else. Given Italy’s long tradition of political interference with public sector broadcasting, this means that when he has been prime [...]

We can all probably agree that Italy’s fit of xenophobia towards Romanians is pretty bad, but it has had one positive consequence; ITS, the extreme-right/nationalist grouping in the European Parliament whose membership can be summed up as “if you want to make some minority unwelcome and you’re in the minority yourself, you’re welcome here”, has [...]

Eurozone Watch has two articles about Germany and Italy that offer support for an optimistic view of the European economy. For a start, Sebastian Dullein argues that a comparison of Germany today and the US after the early 90s recession shows that Germany might be on the brink of a productivity surge. Dullein argues that [...]

As Manuel points out in the accompanying post, Romano Prodi’s resignation as Italy’s Prime Minister is a rather sudden and dramatic, but scarcely unexpected, development. The immediate political crisis may be resolved as rapidly as it appeared, but again as Manuel indicates it may only serve as a prelude for further things to come, and [...]

Well as almost everyone must surely know by now, Romano Prodi’s government resigned earlier in the week. The present situation is still far from clear, with President Giorgio Napolitano holding urgent consultations with the various interested parties even as I write. Since my interest in Italy is largely an economic one (see accompanying post [...]