Balázs György Forman is Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest Department of Economic Geography.
In Italy, we would never have expected this. The coronavirus pandemic has brought an extremely profound economic, social and political divorce in Italy. If one sees the Milan or Florence Cathedrals, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and loves the Adriatic coast, delicious pizzas, wines, ice creams, one sees the surface – the shop window – but does not know the country.
The country’s north-south divide has long been known. However, it is less well known how deep the crisis is for the country as a whole[1]. It is also not common knowledge that the southern end of the Blue Banana Zone, which encompasses the central regions of Europe, has been declining since the turn of the millennium in Milan and northern Italy. Since the introduction of the single European currency, the per capita GDP of northern Italy has fallen by more than 20 percent compared to the EU average[2].
In this blog, I aim to reflect on some of the issues that may have influenced the spread of Coronavirus in Italy:
- Due to the persistent crisis in Italian political life and very frequent changes of government, for at least three decades no one has been able to make a meaningful reform of the unsustainable pension and health care system, or the outdated administrative system. The result is a record high level of Italian public debt, which now stands at ca. 140% of the country’s GDP. The result of the political crisis is not only this, but also very high levels of corruption and a high level of distrust in public institutions. Government administration is slow[3] – barely 20% of the population only use online platforms to conduct their business. In Hungary this figure is 40%, in Denmark 90%[4].
- The Government was slow to adopt the first measures to control the spread of the virus. The population simply did not understand the importance of these measures [5]. In particular, regionalization is an ongoing issue which has not been solved for 75 years. The most important area of operation of the Italian provinces is health, where provinces and local governments spend more than half of their budgets on health, making up 80 percent of health spending[6]. But the autonomy of each province is not the same, nor the autonomy of the individual municipalities. At the outset of the epidemic, it was mistakenly believed that the coronavirus could be stopped at the borders of each province and municipality. During the first period, days were spent with disputes over the competences between the different levels of administration, prior to the Italian Prime Minister declaring a national emergency[7]
- The crisis of Italian demographics – for more than 20 years, Italy has been struggling with low birth rates and low willingness to have children, which has resulted in a reduction in the population of the country as a whole. The main destinations of intra-country migration are Lombardy and Veneto; whereas due to emigration, the population is high in many other parts of the country. However half of those who immigrate to Italy are over 50 years old, resulting in 30% of the national population being older than 65 years of age [8] – as a result, Italy features with the highest rate in Europe. The severe demographic crisis has for some time been overshadowed by Central European – Romanian, Polish – migrant workers and immigrants from Africa. Their living and working conditions provide ideal conditions for the spread of the epidemic.
- Another sign of the social crisis is the severe under-education of the Italian working-age population. This only allows many people to fill jobs paying € 1,000 or less a month. You can no longer buy a home with this. There is also a stark gender divide, with men often under-qualified; for example, amongst graduates under 35, there are 170 women per 100 men[9].
- The Italian craft industry based on family businesses – furniture, clothing. building materials, etc. – crisis. Family businesses based on traditional Italian art and fine arts traditions have faced tremendous competition from Chinese companies. For this reason, many also relocated part of their production to China – the location where virus originated. On January 23, a Chinese couple arrived in Milan who were subsequently diagnosed with Coronavirus in Rome on January 31. On February 7, an Italian man from China was diagnosed with the virus. But the country-wide quarantine was decided only on March 9, when there were already over 9,000 cases.
This blog gives the views of the author, and not the position of the RSA Blog, nor of the Regional Studies Association.
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[1] Mario Baldassarri (2017): The European Roots of the Eurozone Crisis Errors of the Past and Needs for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan – Springer Nature
[2] CEC: My Region, My Europe,Our Future Seventh report on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Brussel
[3] Mario Baldassarri (2017): The European Roots of the Eurozone Crisis Errors of the Past and Needs for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan – Springer Nature
[4] CEC: My Region, My Europe,Our Future Seventh report on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Brussel
[5] BBC: Coronavirus: Northern Italy quarantines 16 million people https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51787238 8 March 2020
[6] CEC: My Region, My Europe,Our Future Seventh report on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Brussel
[7] BBC: Coronavirus: Italy extends emergency measures nationwide https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51810673 10 March 2020
[8] CEC: My Region, My Europe,Our Future Seventh report on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Brussel
[9] CEC: My Region, My Europe,Our Future Seventh report on economic, social and territorial cohesion. Brussel