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INSIDE ITALY

Inside Italy: Berlusconi Airport, Meloni’s mood and an unexpected detective drama

In this week's Inside Italy review, we look at how Italy’s politicians are honouring Silvio Berlusconi, a surprise job for Angela Merkel, and why Giorgia Meloni can’t keep her face straight.

Published: 13 July 2024 10:24 CEST
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council during the NATO 75th anniversary summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council during the NATO 75th anniversary summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, on July 11, 2024. The PM is becoming known for her facial expressions. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP)

Flying low

Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo, Galileo and… Silvio Berlusconi. What do these well-known figures have in common? They’ve all got an airport in Italy named after them – as of Thursday, when the transport ministry announced it had renamed Milan Malpensa airport after the scandal-plagued late former premier.

Unsurprisingly, the idea hasn’t been popular in Italy: many pointed out that naming a major international transport hub after a figure best known abroad for sleaze, tax evasion and close friendships with dictators might not present Italy in the best possible light.

The government, which Berlusconi played an outsized role in forming before his death, didn’t address these concerns as it pushed through the name change “with immediate effect”.

The news was a gift to social media users everywhere, who joked about the airport now featuring a “Bunga Bunga lounge” and asked if this meant it would be getting a facelift. Some said they would boycott Malpensa in future and fly elsewhere; good news for Milan’s other airport, Linate, where the local mayor blocked a past attempt to rename it after Berlusconi.

Judging from the huge – and overwhelmingly negative – reaction this story has had internationally, the damage to Italy’s image has already been done, long before the airport has even had chance to change the signs. Much to the dismay of those of us who’d like to see the country move on from being viewed as a basket case.

Expressing herself

Speaking of taking things seriously (or not), anyone who follows Italian news has probably noticed by now that photos of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni capture some intriguing facial expressions.

Far from keeping a poker face at official engagements, the Italian premier is becoming known for showing us plainly how she feels about any given situation, or person.

Her face always tells a story: from her apparent delight at Rishi Sunak’s company curdling into intense awkwardness at the G7 meeting last month, to her obvious impatience as leaders waited for Joe Biden to arrive at the NATO summit on Thursday.

Meloni’s expressions did not escape the notice of the international press, with English-language journalists enthusing about her being on “top eye-rolling form” and numerous outlets posting the video online.

She was also pictured seemingly grimacing at the back of her long-time political ally, Hungarian President Viktor Orban, who has recently contributed to Meloni’s troubles at the EU level.

Being upstaged in the European parliament, combined with the French and British election results, seemed to have put her in a terrible mood.

People sometimes ask if she’s forgotten about the cameras, but I have no doubt that all this face-pulling is conscious and intentional. It’s another of Meloni’s (admittedly very successful) populist tactics. Her fans often praise her for it and insist she’s just showing normal emotions.

After all, anyone can relate to feeling like pulling a face at an annoying workplace situation or colleague – though most of us know better than to actually do it.

Merkel on the case

Here’s a question you probably weren’t asking: What would happen if former German chancellor Angela Merkel became a private investigator and roamed northern Italy in search of murders to solve?

We are apparently about to find out, as Italy’s state broadcaster Rai this week announced a new primetime show called Miss Merkel based around her doing precisely this in her retirement, for reasons which are yet to become clear.

Italian TV critics assure us that the series, produced in Germany and dubbed in Italian, is “absolutely real”.

“Living in the age of fake news and artificial intelligence, everyone was suspicious when the first images of Miss Merkel appeared on social media,” wrote Italian review website RivistaStudio, describing the show as “even more absurd than the images suggest”.

Merkel herself doesn’t seem to have commented on the show, but we bet she’ll be tuning in.

Miss Merkel is set to air on Rai 2 on Fridays from July 12th at 9.20pm.

Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news and talking points in Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

 
 

Member comments

  1. I,m very pleased that Malpensa has been named after Berlusconi he played a big part in Italian history and was a larger than life character something that is missing in todays poor efforts.

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INSIDE ITALY

Inside Italy: Water waste problems and why beach clubs are striking in August

In this week's Inside Italy review, we look at chronic water waste problems amid a crushing drought, planned beach club strikes and a live-TV tirade against French coffee.

Published: 3 August 2024 12:00 CEST
Inside Italy: Water waste problems and why beach clubs are striking in August

Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip from Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

A leaky boot

While northern Italy has been reported as having abundant water reserves this summer following above-average rainfall in spring, large parts of the centre and south have been in the grip of a severe drought in recent months, with the islands of Sicily and Sardinia bearing the brunt of the crisis so far.  

Regional authorities in Sardinia declared a state of emergency earlier this week amid a crushing water shortage that is threatening the livelihood of thousands of local farmers.

But conditions are possibly even more alarming in Sicily, where consecutive months of hot and dry temperatures have withered crops, vineyards and fruit groves, and deprived livestock of pastureland, causing damage already estimated at 2.7 billion euros.

“There’s no hope because it hasn’t rained since May of last year. All the planted fields have been lost,” Salvatore Michele Amico, a farmer near the town of San Cataldo, in Sicily’s dry interior, told AFP this week.

While acknowledging the role played by the near-total absence of rainfall for close to a year in parts of the island, the Sicilian branch of Italy’s farmers association Coldiretti this week pointed to the persisting lack of infrastructure aimed at “using water intelligently”.

According to Italy’s national statistics office, Istat, Sicily has one of the country’s highest rates of wasted drinking water, with some 51.6 percent of water lost from distribution networks in 2022 (that’s around 157 litres of wasted water per resident every day).

But the inefficiency of water distribution networks flagged by Istat is far from being an exclusively Sicilian problem. 

According to a YouTrend report based on Istat data, 2.4 billion cubic metres of water are pumped into the water network of Italy’s 109 provincial capitals every year. Of these, over 36 percent are lost, corresponding to a daily loss of 41 cubic metres of water for every kilometre of network.

Major upgrade works on the national water distribution system are part of Italy’s PNRR – a blueprint of key infrastructure investments using EU-wide post-pandemic recovery funds – but the project’s progress has long been something of a mystery in Italy, with little to no publicly available information about timelines and overall spending.

Beach club strikes

From transport to education to healthcare, strikes are far from rare in Italy, but protests tend to be far and few between in August as millions of Italians can be found relaxing at holiday destinations up and down the boot for much of the month. 

People pictured at a private beach in Italy's Lazio region

People pictured at a private beach in Italy’s Lazio region. Photo by Filippo MONTEFORTE / AFP

Yet, we may still get to see some strikes this month (and slightly surprising ones at that) as beach club operators have threatened to walk out on three different dates in August amid a tug of war with the government over a contested EU directive. 

Under EU competition rules first approved in 2006 but postponed by multiple Italian governments over the years, Italy’s private beach concessions will have to be put up for public tender from January 2025 after being automatically renewed and handed down from one generation to the other for decades.

But concession holders have been fighting the EU directive tooth and nail in recent months, complaining about the lack of national criteria for the planned public tenders, and asking the government to grant some form of economic compensation to outgoing operators.

Italy’s government hasn’t yet made its stance clear on this demand, but any type of ‘deal sweetener’ would surely be hard to justify, especially after reports revealed that state coffers only collect €115 million from beach concessions – that’s against a total estimated revenue of €32 billion.

Coffee that ‘matches the colour of the Seine’

Italians are famously very proud and protective of their coffee culture, and tend to be exceptionally suspicious of caffè brewed anywhere outside of national borders. 

We got another reminder of that earlier this week as Italian sports journalist Luca Sacchi went on a memorable live-TV tirade against the coffee served at the Paris Olympics press room. 

“In the press room, there’s coffee that matches the waters of the Seine,” he said, alluding to unhealthy water pollution levels that caused the postponement of the men’s triathlon events on Tuesday. 

The journalist then doubled down: “It is probably made with the same water, then diluted with a low-quality soluble”.

Unsurprisingly, Sacchi’s invective inspired countless reactions and memes on Italian social media, with one user saying: “Someone save those poor Italian commentators from the Seine coffees”.

Inside Italy is our weekly look at some of the news and talking points in Italy that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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