Transatlantico

Italy caused a political firestorm in mid-March when it announced that it would be joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative by signing a memorandum of understanding during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Rome from March 21 to 23. As the first G-7 country to accept a formal agreement to participate in the initiative, also […]

Yellow Vests, Italian Budget Battles & Silent Labor Unions By Andrew Spannaus in Milan Special to Consortium News From the European Union’s standpoint, the historic levels of social unrest confronting French President Emmanuel Macron, one of its leading champions, came at a delicate moment in its dealings with Italy. Since mid-September, the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, […]

The Italian government of Giuseppe Conte, whose EU-critical policies are driven by the leaders of the two coalition partners, and Deputy Prime Ministers, Luigi Di Maio of the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Matteo Salvini of the League, has decided to openly challenge EU budget rules. When in mid-September Economics Minister Giovanni Tria initially set […]

During the 2016 United States election campaign, most of Italy’s political class and media adopted the standard line about how Donald Trump was a grave threat to the stability of the Western world. Unlike previous Italian governments, which toed the pro-globalization line, the new government in Rome, supported by the anti-system Five Star Movement and the right-wingLeague, seems […]

Orders for Italian machine tools jumped in the third quarter of 2017, seeing an increase of 14.7% compared to the same period last year. The data published by the Research and Business Culture Center of UCIMU, the Italian machine tools, robots and automation manufacturers’ association, show the excellent performance of the internal market, +68.2% compared […]

Poverty levels in Italy remain significant, but essentially unchanged in recent years, after the rapid rise starting 2010 following the international financial crisis and the Euro crisis in particular. In its “Discussion Note” for September 2017, the Prometeia research association stresses that in Italy the categories “at risk of poverty” and “working poor” are above […]

- by Andrew Spannaus – European nations have been thrown into a political crisis by the hundreds of thousands of migrants coming north from the Middle East and Africa. The number has grown in recent years, due to a mix of wars and poverty, resulting in a visible increase of the influx of foreigners across […]

In the context of the post-industrial transformation of western economies over recent decades, Italy remains one of the countries that, at least relatively, still has an economy based on manufacturing. Despite a reduction of productive activities in recent years, and in particular during the period of austerity from 2011 to 2014, some indicators show the […]