Sicilian Culture: News: Wave of Nostaligia Sweeps Italy At "Loss of A Loved One"

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Wave of Nostaligia Sweeps Italy At "Loss of A Loved One"
By John Phillips & Philip Webster, The UK Times (from Milan, Italy)

Friday, December 21, 2001 - - Our correspondents find Italian doubts growing as people fear being short-changed. A longstanding enthusiastic advocate of European integration, is jittery about the advent of the single currency. Official preparation for the demise of the lira is widely felt to have been inadequate and the flagging economy has fuelled growing uncertainty about the euro.
Successive Rome Governments battled to enable Italy to adopt the single currency with the first wave of euro candidates, overcoming German opposition on the diplomatic front and introducing a series of domestic austerity measures such as the levying in 1997 of 12,500 billion lire (£4.2 billion) through an extraordinary “Eurotax’’ to meet Maastricht conversion targets. Such determination to avoid relegation to the “second division’’ of European countries, as the mainstream political parties saw it, surprised Italy’s EU partners.
About 70% of Italians see the euro as a source of complication in their daily lives, according to a poll carried out for the Ministry of Economy. As many as 72% of Italians fear that they will be cheated by unscrupulous shopkeepers taking advantage of the changeover. Italian consumers are worried about euro-fuelled inflation and fear that they will be unable to cope with transactions in the new currency.
Overall knowledge about the euro has “reached a good level”, with 52% of Italians aware of the value of the euro (1,936.27 lire) and 89% knowing that the period of dual circulation starts on January 1.
Italy will use the maximum period allowed for dualcurrency circulation, from January 1 to February 28. But Giampaolo Fabris, chairman of the influential research and consultancy group GPF & Associati, is less optimistic that Italians will be able to live without lire. “The lack of preparation for the changeover is staggering,’’ he says.
Information on the euro has been “badly managed” and should have been “more interactive and stimulating’’, Signor Fabris adds. “The euro should have been used more in television games to prompt viewers and candidates actively to participate in using the new currency.’’
Several surveys have indictated that fewer than half of Italy’s small and medium-sized companies, the country’s industrial backbone, have seriously prepared for conversion.
“To prepare for the euro requires a big effort. And the smaller the company the bigger the effort,” says Serena Colavita, a spokeswoman for the association of leather industry producers, Ainmpes.
Against this background a wave of nostalgia for the lira is sweeping the nation. The veteran comic actor, Alberto Sordi, is sponsoring the erection of a huge bronze sculpture to be made of smelted 200 lira coins to commemorate the currency. Signor Sordi compared the disappearance of the lira to the “loss of a loved one”.
The disadvantages are becoming more visible. One cause of concern is the introduction of a two-tier currency. After the Second World War Italy abandoned the use of centesimi, 100 of which were worth one lira. Handling the euro is seen as a testing challenge of arithmetic.
That nervousness is linked with the fear that retailers are unlikely to round prices to the lower unit. The Milan city government recently fuelled such fears by proclaiming a 30 per cent rise in the price of tram tickets to 1 euro (1,936.27 lire) on January 1, compared with the current price of 1,500 lire (0.77 euro).
The Rome authorities say the changeover will have “no impact’’ on prices in Italy because of competitive market conditions. The Italian Government, for its part, cites a constellation of measures to protect consumers, including binding guidelines on the conversion of tariffs to euros and recommendations to local governments to avoid mark-ups.
In an effort to smoothe the passage to the euro the Government will post 17.5 million pocket calculators to Italian families.
Many Italians have been buying new wallets as festive gifts since euro banknotes are bigger than lira ones. Purses for loose change are considered another “must” for Christmas stockings.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,37-2001590948,00.html

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