Meloni challenges Europe’s competing diplomatic formats on Ukraine. An agreed spokesperson would help, but Europe also needs an agreed message.

European leaders regularly call for unity. Agreeing who should embody it is a more delicate exercise. A single European voice sounds like an obvious ambition until governments must decide who can speak, what they can promise and which disagreements they are entitled to resolve.

Reporting for Euronews on 5 November, Vincenzo Genovese describes a letter from Giorgia Meloni to European Council President António Costa criticising overlapping initiatives on Ukraine peace talks. Meloni argues that competing formats without clear direction or a shared mandate undermine European credibility. She wants EU leaders to address representation at their forthcoming informal meeting in Dublin.

That intervention raises a legitimate institutional problem. Gathering a group of governments is not the same as securing authority to represent everyone outside the room. Yet requiring every initiative to pass through the largest possible forum can make diplomacy slower and less adaptable. The tension cannot be resolved simply by declaring one approach European and the other divisive.

Smaller groups may be able to explore proposals, test positions and respond quickly. Their usefulness depends on what happens next: whether other governments are informed, whether commitments remain within an understood mandate and whether exploratory discussions are mistaken for collective decisions.

The distinction between Europe and the European Union matters, too. A diplomatic architecture addressing continental security must consider the contribution of partners outside the bloc. Institutional clarity should make cooperation more effective, rather than turn membership boundaries into an obstacle to it.

Euronews also places Meloni’s intervention against domestic criticism of Italy’s international influence and disagreements over military assistance to Ukraine. That context does not invalidate her argument. It does suggest that a demand for clearer representation can serve both a European purpose and a national political interest.

Italy’s participation, however, should be assessed through the contribution it is prepared to make, as well as the meetings it attends. The same standard should apply to every capital seeking a larger role. Influence becomes more credible when accompanied by commitments, resources and a willingness to accept responsibility for collective decisions.

The essential question remains what any European representative would be authorised to say. A common voice needs positions on security, implementation and the consequences of an agreement being broken. Selecting a spokesperson cannot resolve differences that governments have left deliberately unsettled.

Above all, the legitimacy of European diplomacy must include respect for Ukraine’s own agency. Coordination among supporting countries should strengthen Kyiv’s position and capacity to decide its future. A more orderly European conversation would have limited value if it became a conversation conducted over Ukrainian heads.

THE ITALIC VIEW

Meloni’s challenge is worth taking seriously: who gave the person at the microphone permission to speak for everyone else?

The follow-up is less comfortable. Are the governments demanding a single voice prepared to accept a message they did not individually write? Collective representation requires some willingness to share control.

Europe would benefit from fewer ambiguities about its diplomatic mandate. But the measure of success will be the substance and credibility of its commitments, rather than the elegance of the seating plan.

Source: Vincenzo Genovese, Euronews — “Italian PM slams EU’s fragmented approach to Ukraine peace talks”, 5 November 2026.

Vannacci’s movement faces a test beyond provocation: whether it can build an organisation and answer the everyday concerns of its supporters.

A political movement can establish its identity by declaring what it despises. Building something durable requires a rather more demanding conversation about what it intends to do. The distinction is easily overlooked during a rapid ascent, when publicity, enthusiasm and electoral potential can appear to be different names for the same thing.

In a report published on 6 November, Reuters journalist Angelo Amante describes weakening support for Roberto Vannacci’s Futuro Nazionale and departures among activists. Recent polls cited place the party between 5.8% and 7.9%, below its summer peak near 9%. Some former supporters complain about organisational treatment and an agenda neglecting hospitals, schools and housing. Party lawmaker Rossano Sasso rejects suggestions of internal problems and says membership is increasing.

The competing accounts deserve to remain visible. Departures do not establish that an entire organisation is disintegrating; a membership claim does not answer every criticism of how it operates. Polls, meanwhile, measure voting intentions at a particular moment. They cannot tell us that a political project has reached its final destination.

What the reporting invites is a more useful question: what converts an audience into a party?

A supporter can follow a leader without having much influence over the organisation built around him. An activist expects something more substantial: responsibilities, access, a voice in decisions and a reason to continue giving up evenings and weekends. A movement that promises to overturn established politics must eventually decide how its own authority will work. That is where the language of rebellion encounters the less glamorous business of internal procedure.

There is a similar tension in policy. A confrontational identity can give otherwise unrelated grievances a common vocabulary. But agreement about an enemy does not necessarily produce agreement about spending priorities, public services or the compromises required to administer them. The practical test comes when supporters ask for choices rather than declarations.

For Italy’s established parties, the temptation will be to treat difficulties inside a challenger as proof that the underlying demand has disappeared. That would be an optimistic reading. Disappointment with one political vehicle does not automatically restore confidence in another. Voters who leave may return elsewhere, abstain or remain available to a different appeal.

Nor does asking about hospitals make a voter indifferent to immigration or national identity. The point is that political preferences contain more than one demand. A party seeking lasting support has to explain how those demands fit together.

THE ITALIC VIEW

The promise of saying the unsayable has a surprisingly administrative afterlife. Eventually somebody asks about a clinic, a bus route or a school roof, and the leader needs an answer that cannot be delivered through tone alone.

That is the wider significance of this story. Provocation can create a political opening. Whether a movement deserves to occupy it depends on what it builds afterwards.

Source: Angelo Amante, Reuters — “Italy’s far-right Vannacci loses ground as support slips, activists quit”, 6 November 2026.

The modern supermarket has acquired a surprising new vulnerability. Its refrigerators are connected systems, and the software that keeps food cold can become a target for criminals operating nowhere near the shop.

On 3 November, Reuters reported that a cyberattack affecting refrigeration systems across Europe had also reached Italy. The Italian government said the domestic impact was extremely limited and that no public-health risk from thawing food had been identified.

That distinction matters. A cyberattack does not automatically produce a food-safety emergency. Officials described a small number of affected Italian outlets, mostly equipped with outdated security systems. Investigations were underway, while authorities continued monitoring the situation.

Elsewhere in Europe, the consequences were more visible. Some retailers had to discard refrigerated or frozen products after temperature-control systems were disrupted. The attackers’ identities and motives had not been established.

The incident is instructive precisely because it concerns such an ordinary piece of equipment. When people imagine digital risk, they tend to picture banks, hospitals, government databases or personal information stored on smartphones.

But refrigeration, logistics, heating, lighting and inventory systems increasingly depend on networked controls. The same connectivity that enables remote monitoring, preventative maintenance and energy efficiency can expand the number of places where something might go wrong.

For food retailers, resilience is therefore not confined to installing antivirus software on office computers. It includes knowing which suppliers maintain connected equipment, how security updates are delivered, who can remotely access controllers and what employees should do when digital systems fail.

A practical emergency plan may be just as important as an expensive security platform. Can temperatures still be checked manually? Can damaged stock be isolated? Can a shop continue operating safely while its equipment is disconnected?

There is a wider economic dimension. Large retail chains may employ specialist security teams, but smaller operators often inherit equipment, maintenance contracts and technical systems whose vulnerabilities are difficult to evaluate.

According to the Italian government’s preliminary assessment, many outlets had up-to-date protection, while affected premises tended to rely on obsolete systems, internet-exposed interfaces or inadequate authentication mechanisms.

That is encouraging, but it does not mean the entire food distribution network is immune. Cybersecurity is not a certificate obtained once and displayed forever. It is an ongoing responsibility shared by manufacturers, software suppliers, retailers and the people maintaining the equipment.

Europe has spent years discussing digital sovereignty in terms of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and strategic technology. The supermarket case offers a less glamorous definition: the ability to keep essential services running when connected systems are attacked.

Sometimes the test of a sophisticated digital economy is whether the frozen peas remain frozen.

THE ITALIC VIEW

The most revealing technology stories are often the least glamorous. Nobody goes shopping to admire a refrigerator’s cybersecurity policy. Yet the digital economy now reaches into places where failure has immediate, physical consequences.

Italy appears to have escaped major disruption this time. The lesson is not to disconnect every freezer. It is to remember that a connected appliance is also a system somebody must secure.

Italy is about to discover whether having a larger bank is the same thing as having a stronger banking system. Those are related ideas, but they are not interchangeable. On 3 November, Valentina Za reported for Reuters that Intesa Sanpaolo expects an antitrust ruling by the end of the month on its €34 billion cash-and-share bid for Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Chief executive Carlo Messina expressed confidence that any conditions imposed would remain economically compatible with the offer.

The immediate story is a takeover. The larger story is the future shape of Italian finance. MPS has spent years moving between crisis, rescue and attempts at reinvention. Its more recent acquisition of Mediobanca made the institution a significant actor in the country’s financial architecture, including through the connection with insurer Generali. Intesa’s proposal would consolidate another substantial part of that architecture under a single group.

The numbers explain why shareholders might be interested. Intesa reported third-quarter net profit of €2.65 billion, above market expectations, and raised its full-year outlook to well above €10 billion. It expects to launch the MPS offer in the week of 23 November, subject to regulatory approvals. It has already agreed to sell branches to Unipol and says it does not anticipate substantial additional divestments, though the competition authority has yet to decide.

For customers, however, the relevant questions are less glamorous than the size of the transaction. Will a larger group improve access to credit? Will small firms gain from greater lending capacity or face fewer alternatives? Will households benefit from better digital services, or discover that local banking choices have narrowed? Branch disposals can mitigate concentration, but their effectiveness depends on who acquires them and whether genuine competition survives in the territories concerned.

Italy’s banking debate is also political. The government is seeking greater contributions from financial institutions to public finances, while banks argue that heavier taxation could undermine their ability to lend and invest. Messina criticised further proposed increases for 2027, even as the group’s results remained strong. Both propositions can be true: a profitable banking system contributes to financial stability, and policymakers can legitimately debate how its profits should be taxed.

What is not yet known is the final antitrust remedy, the market’s response to the formal offer or the eventual consequences for customers. Treating a proposed merger as an accomplished transformation would be premature. Yet the direction is clear enough to merit scrutiny. Italy is not merely deciding which institution owns another. It is deciding how much concentration its economy can accommodate in exchange for scale.

THE ITALIC VIEW

Italy has long wanted national champions. It has sometimes been less precise about what they should champion. Size can finance technology, strengthen capital and help institutions compete abroad. It can also reduce the number of doors a customer can knock on. The antitrust authority’s job is to ensure that a larger bank does not make the rest of the country feel smaller.

Italy’s proposed exit tax has become an international story before becoming law. On 5 November, Reuters reported that Deputy Economy Minister Maurizio Leo was willing to consider changes following criticism from tax and financial advisers. Expected revenue is modest: €3.4 million in 2027, rising to €6.7 million annually thereafter.

The international interest is understandable. For anyone considering a move to Italy, the financial consequences of eventually leaving form part of the decision to arrive.

In a 3 November Alphaville article, the Financial Times placed the debate in its international context. Exit taxes take different forms: some countries treat certain assets as though they had been sold when their owner emigrates; others retain the right to tax an actual sale for a period after departure. A shared label can conceal substantially different systems.

The underlying tension is between two legitimate interests. Governments want to preserve their ability to tax gains associated with a person’s period of residence. Taxpayers want to move countries without facing payment demands that exceed their available cash.

An investment can appreciate considerably without producing any spendable income. That makes the timing of payment, valuation rules and safeguards central to the design of an exit tax.

For Italy, another sensitive question is how the proposal would interact with the tax regimes used to attract new residents. Analyses published by Charles Russell Speechlys and Simmons & Simmons indicate that the outcome would depend partly on the assets held and the regime applicable to the individual. It would therefore be misleading to suggest that everyone benefiting from an inbound incentive would automatically face the same treatment.

The proposal remains subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Its final wording will matter considerably more than the shorthand currently dominating the debate.

ITALIC View

International coverage offers a useful opportunity to move beyond competing slogans about punishing those who leave or frightening those who might arrive.

People relocate for work, family, health and retirement. Tax considerations can also influence their decisions. Good legislation needs to address the incentives and consequences without assuming that every departure has the same motivation.

The government’s willingness to consider revisions creates

The most revealing diplomatic encounters are sometimes those with no communiqué. Bob Dylan visited Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on 4 November, between concerts in Milan and Rome. The meeting was brief. The exchange of gifts was almost comically neat: a rosary from the pope, a copy of Dylan’s autobiography from the singer. Neither object can tell us what they discussed. That has not prevented the encounter from carrying a cultural weight beyond its duration.

Nicole Winfield’s Associated Press report supplies the essential details and the more interesting context. Leo had previously referred to an unpublished anti-nuclear song Dylan wrote in 1963. Dylan, in turn, has long engaged with religious imagery, including the figure of St Augustine, important to Leo’s Augustinian tradition. Their meeting was not the first intersection between the musician and the papacy: Dylan performed before John Paul II in Bologna in 1997.

What makes the latest encounter worth noticing is not the idea that two famous men have found a shared theology. That would be a conclusion too grand for a private conversation of a few minutes. Rather, it shows how an institution with a two-thousand-year memory and an artist whose career has repeatedly resisted classification can still recognise a common language of moral unease.

Dylan’s songs have travelled through protest, faith, doubt, performance and refusal. The Vatican, meanwhile, remains an institution capable of turning a gesture into a global image. There is an asymmetry here. One participant is an artist who has spent decades frustrating attempts to explain him. The other leads an organisation whose public statements are often parsed with extraordinary care. A meeting between them is therefore an invitation to interpret, and a reminder not to over-interpret.

The Italian setting matters too. Rome is a city in which cultural and religious history rarely occupy separate rooms. A singer travelling between two Italian concerts can briefly become part of the Vatican’s public narrative. The moment is neither a political endorsement nor a conversion story. It is a small episode in the long history of institutions borrowing cultural language, and artists discovering that their work has acquired meanings they cannot entirely control.

The photograph will circulate longer than the conversation lasted. That is usually how modern symbolism works.

THE ITALIC VIEW

A private meeting does not need to become a manifesto. Sometimes the interesting story is precisely the gap between a modest human encounter and the elaborate significance the world is eager to assign it.

A steelworks can be too important to close and too damaged to operate as before. Italy’s former Ilva plant in Taranto has spent years demonstrating that these conditions can coexist, however uncomfortable that makes the political conversation. Now an investor says he is prepared to take over, provided the state lends him at least €1 billion. The government says it cannot promise special treatment during a tender. Both statements may be true; neither produces a working industrial plan.

In her Reuters report of 4 November, Giselda Vagnoni describes the offer from Michael Flacks, chairman of the US-based Flacks Group. He presents state support as a prerequisite, not an optional sweetener, and says he will not submit more paperwork without a clear signal from Rome. The government’s position is that commissioners must run a compliant bidding process and cannot guarantee an individual bidder an outcome.

The latest deadline for binding offers is 9 November. That would be challenging enough without the Supreme Court’s recent decision concerning the shutdown of blast furnaces, a ruling rooted in health and environmental concerns. Taranto’s industrial future is therefore not simply a question of who can finance a purchase. It concerns what kind of steelmaking can operate legally, safely and economically, and how quickly a transition could realistically happen.

Around 8,000 people work directly at the plant. Steel also feeds Italian construction, engineering and automotive supply chains. Flacks suggests output might eventually rise from about two million tonnes in 2025 to four million. That is an investor’s ambition, not a production forecast validated by the courts or the government. It would require credible assumptions about capital expenditure, energy, environmental compliance and demand.

The €1 billion request matters because its form matters. A loan may be repayable, but the public still bears risk. Who would secure it? What happens if the restructuring fails? What environmental obligations would be enforceable, and by whom? The answer cannot be that jobs automatically trump health, or that health automatically renders workers invisible. Taranto has already paid too much for that false choice.

Italy’s challenge is to make the conditions of rescue transparent before declaring any rescuer a success. An industrial strategy that depends on permanent ambiguity is not a strategy. It is a sequence of extensions, each with a new deadline and the same unresolved bill.

THE ITALIC VIEW

The Italian state is being asked to act as lender, referee and guarantor of industrial peace. The awkward part is that these are three different jobs. Taranto deserves a contract with measurable obligations, not another photograph of a handshake.

Every publishing family needs someone who asks awkward questions at dinner. Ours now has FAULTLINE.

An English-language publication dedicated to geopolitics, power and global affairs, FAULTLINE joins the Nomag Media family alongside ITALIC, with its own interests, temperament and editorial identity.

Its natural setting is the conversation that continues after a policy briefing: when the prepared statements have been put away and someone starts asking whether the assumptions behind them actually hold.

The tone is measured. The thinking is free to be uncomfortable.

Moderation, here, describes how an argument is conducted. It places no obligation on the conclusions. A calm voice can question an established policy, challenge a comfortable consensus or take a position that deserves a vigorous response.

FAULTLINE examines the connections that complicate our picture of the world. Rivals share supply chains. Allies compete for investment and influence. Governments make promises whose delivery depends on decisions taken elsewhere.

Understanding those relationships requires looking closely at interests, institutions and the practical limits of power. Who can act? Who pays? What survives contact with economic reality?

Its editorial position is liberal in values, independent in judgment and realist in geopolitics. Understanding a government’s interests does not imply approval of its conduct. Principles matter, and so do the consequences of the policies pursued in their name.

Readers will find analysis, explainers, historical perspectives and editorial cartoons. Sources are linked; interpretations remain open to scrutiny. The ambition is to build a conversation in which disagreement improves the argument and new evidence can change the conclusion.

For ITALIC readers, the family resemblance should be familiar: curiosity about how the world works, an international outlook and a willingness to follow a question beyond its usual boundaries.

ITALIC continues to look outward from Italy. FAULTLINE takes the wider relationships as its starting point.

We think the two will have plenty to discuss.

Meet our brother. Bring your objections.

Visit TheFaultLine

Tax relief, support for small businesses and a new debate over who should pay. Italy’s 2027 budget reveals the difficult balance between economic ambition and fiscal caution.

Read the original Reuters report

Italy has unveiled a €26 billion budget for 2027, combining tax reductions for middle-income earners and self-employed workers with additional contributions from banks, insurers, energy companies and the gambling industry.

The package, approved by Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet on 28 October, is the government’s final budget proposal before the general election expected in 2027. It includes higher healthcare spending, an expansion of the 33% income-tax bracket to €55,000 and a proposed increase in the simplified tax regime’s annual revenue threshold from €85,000 to €100,000.

Financial institutions are expected to contribute more than €5 billion, with energy companies and the gambling sector providing approximately €700 million each.

The government forecasts a deficit of 3.4% of GDP in 2027, compared with an expected 2.9% in 2026. That would take the deficit above the European Union’s usual 3% reference threshold, using temporary flexibility under European fiscal rules.

The measures must still pass through Parliament. Their final scope and implementation could change.

The appeal of immediate relief

There is an understandable political and economic rationale behind the package.

Households face continuing pressure from living costs. Independent workers frequently complain about taxation and administrative complexity. Businesses need a degree of predictability in an uncertain international environment.

Tax relief can provide breathing space. The proposed expansion of the 33% income-tax bracket, for example, would deliver a maximum annual benefit of approximately €500 to eligible taxpayers.

For self-employed professionals, raising the simplified tax threshold to €100,000 would allow some activities to remain within a relatively favourable regime for longer.

These are tangible benefits. But relief and reform are not the same thing.

The problem with rewarding smallness

Italy’s economy relies heavily on independent professionals, family businesses and micro-enterprises. They are often remarkably resilient, adaptable and commercially inventive.

Yet remaining small is not always a strategic choice.

A business may avoid hiring, investing or expanding because growing creates additional administrative obligations and potentially less favourable tax treatment.

Increasing the threshold of a preferential tax regime can remove an immediate obstacle, but it can also move the next obstacle further down the road.

A more ambitious approach would make the transition from an individual activity to an organised enterprise easier, rather than making it more attractive to remain below a particular turnover ceiling.

Banks, investment and fiscal confidence

Asking financial institutions to contribute additional revenue is politically understandable, particularly when governments need resources without directly increasing household taxes.

However, an economy that needs private investment must also consider the consistency and predictability of its fiscal framework.

Banks are expected to finance businesses, support investment and help households access credit. Governments have legitimate reasons to tax profitable sectors, but they must also evaluate the long-term consequences of repeatedly changing the rules.

For Italy, this tension is especially relevant because its public debt and modest growth outlook leave limited room for fiscal mistakes.

A budget can redistribute resources. It cannot create economic productivity through redistribution alone.

ITALIC VIEW | Italy needs to stop confusing protection with growth

The most revealing feature of this budget is not the amount of money involved. It is the economic model the measures appear designed to preserve.

Italy continues to organise much of its policy around protecting existing categories: taxpayers within specific income brackets, self-employed people below particular revenue thresholds and sectors selected to finance public commitments.

Protection is sometimes necessary. But it is not a substitute for transformation.

What Italy needs is not simply another threshold below which life becomes easier. It needs a system in which businesses can move beyond those thresholds without encountering disproportionate penalties or complexity.

The same applies to the country’s smaller municipalities.

A tax concession can encourage someone to consider relocating to Italy. It cannot, by itself, guarantee functioning transport, accessible healthcare, reliable digital infrastructure or an administration capable of responding promptly.

A property incentive may stimulate a purchase. It does not automatically create a functioning community.

And a simplified tax regime may help an independent professional survive. It does not necessarily help that professional build an internationally competitive business.

This is where the Italian economic debate needs to become more ambitious.

Rather than asking exclusively how much relief the government can distribute, policymakers should ask what prevents individuals, companies and territories from becoming more productive and economically independent.

There is also a question for foreign investors and professionals considering Italy.

The country remains extraordinarily attractive in terms of lifestyle, entrepreneurial opportunities, cultural assets and territorial diversity. But attractiveness is not the same as accessibility, and opportunity is not the same as an effective operating environment.

Italy does not suffer from a shortage of potential. It suffers from the cost and complexity of turning potential into something larger.

The proposed budget may ease some immediate pressures. That is worthwhile.

But the measure of a successful economic policy should not be how comfortably people can remain where they are. It should be how confidently they can move forward.

ITALIC — From Italy. Without geography.

Italy has spent years trying to persuade people to move to its smaller towns. Ireland is approaching the question from another direction: making it easier for people to stay where they already live.

As Harry McGee reported in The Irish Times on 27 October, the Irish government has launched a new rural development strategy focused on transport, digital connectivity, employment and everyday services.

One figure is particularly revealing. Ireland now has approximately 420 digital working hubs, according to the figures cited by Prime Minister Micheál Martin.

A separate National Hub Network Strategy for 2026–2030 outlines 36 measures intended to strengthen the system.

This is considerably more interesting than opening another coworking space.

Ireland is attempting to make remote working part of its territorial infrastructure, alongside broadband, public transport and services for businesses.

The difference matters.

For years, discussions about remote work concentrated on whether employees should spend two or three days in the office. The geographical consequences received considerably less attention.

Yet the possibility of working away from a corporate headquarters can fundamentally change the relationship between employment and residence.

A professional living in a smaller community no longer necessarily needs to commute daily to a major city. A local entrepreneur may gain access to professional facilities without relocating the business. A community can retain economic activity that would otherwise disappear.

But a building with desks and an internet connection is not automatically a development policy.

The sustainability of these hubs depends on their actual use, the services they provide and their ability to connect with local businesses and institutions.

This is where Italy could learn something.

The country possesses an enormous stock of underused public and private buildings: former schools, municipal offices, railway premises and commercial properties in historic centres.

Many could accommodate professional activities. Some already do.

What is often missing is the coordinated system that makes individual initiatives recognisable, accessible and economically sustainable.

Italy has also become rather enthusiastic about attracting digital nomads, sometimes treating them as an answer to demographic decline. The approach has merit, but visitors and temporary residents cannot substitute for a functioning local economy.

Ireland’s strategy raises a more fundamental question: what if the first objective of territorial development were not attracting newcomers, but removing the reasons existing residents feel compelled to leave?

Housing matters. So do schools, healthcare, transport and the possibility of pursuing a career without abandoning one’s community.

Remote working can support this transformation, provided it is treated as an economic instrument rather than a lifestyle slogan.

The Irish experience does not yet prove that every hub delivers measurable benefits. It does, however, demonstrate what becomes possible when individual initiatives are connected through a national strategy.

The ITALIC View

Italy has become exceptionally good at marketing the dream of moving to a small town. Ireland is investing in the practical conditions that allow people to remain in one. Perhaps the future of regional development depends less on persuading people to relocate and more on giving them fewer reasons to leave.

Europe has spent much of the artificial intelligence revolution doing what it knows best: writing the rules while others build the technology. An Italian company now wants to challenge that division of labour.

As Leo Marchandon reported for Reuters on 25 June, Milan-founded Domyn is leading EUROPA, a consortium selected to develop a fully open-source artificial intelligence model using Europe’s supercomputing infrastructure.

The ambition is considerable. The proposed model will exceed 400 billion parameters, with organisations able to reproduce and operate it on their own infrastructure. For governments and businesses increasingly uncomfortable with technological dependence, that is an attractive proposition.

But there is an important distinction between owning the technology and knowing what to do with it.

Europe already possesses universities, researchers, industrial companies and computing resources capable of supporting significant technological development. What it has struggled to create is an ecosystem that consistently converts those assets into globally competitive products.

Domyn’s background makes the initiative particularly interesting. Rather than concentrating exclusively on consumer chatbots, the company has developed systems for regulated sectors, including finance, government and heavy industry.

These are areas where control over data and infrastructure can matter as much as model performance.

For Italy, this could be a more promising opportunity than simply attempting to reproduce Silicon Valley.

Italian manufacturing is characterised by specialist companies, complex processes and knowledge that rarely appears in publicly available datasets. Artificial intelligence capable of operating securely within those environments could deliver substantial economic value.

Yet the largest obstacle may not be technological.

European companies must be convinced that adopting European AI offers advantages beyond political symbolism. The systems must be reliable, commercially accessible and sufficiently adaptable to justify the investment.

Public institutions can finance research and provide computing capacity. They cannot guarantee that businesses will choose the results.

And a model containing hundreds of billions of parameters is not automatically better suited to a manufacturing company than a smaller, cheaper system designed for a specific task.

The measure of Europe’s success should therefore be neither the size of its models nor the nationality of their developers. It should be the creation of an industry capable of turning technological independence into productivity, employment and competitive advantage.

Italy has an opportunity to contribute to that industry. Whether it can also become one of its principal beneficiaries remains an open question.

The ITALIC View

Europe does not need an artificial intelligence model merely to demonstrate that it can build one. It needs companies that can turn research into useful products and customers willing to pay for them. Italy’s industrial knowledge may prove more valuable to that mission than another impressive technological announcement.

Rome has always been remarkably good at changing the purpose of its buildings without entirely erasing their past. Ancient temples became churches, aristocratic residences became public institutions, and former industrial spaces found new commercial lives. But the latest transformation in Via delle Botteghe Oscure has a particularly Italian sense of irony: a building once associated with the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party has reopened as a five-star luxury hotel.

On 27 October, Hyatt announced the opening of Thompson Rome, the brand’s first property in Italy. The hotel occupies a landmark building dating from the 1940s, just a short walk from Piazza Venezia, in a street that played an important role in the country’s post-war political history. For generations, the address was associated with party officials, political debates and decisions that influenced Italian public life. Today, its new identity belongs to international hospitality, contemporary design and luxury travel.

The contrast is striking, although the story deserves more than an easy joke about capitalism occupying the former home of Italian communism. The building’s conversion involved substantial architectural restoration, including its original marble staircase. Renovation work also brought to light a sculptural wall and an inlaid floor by Italian artist Giò Pomodoro, both concealed for decades and now incorporated into the hotel’s interiors. Rather than removing every trace of the past, the project has made elements of that history visible again.

Thompson Rome offers 69 rooms and suites, with dining spaces and a rooftop overlooking the capital. The property is owned and operated by AG Group and Rossifin Group, whose partnership combines hospitality management with investment in the building’s redevelopment. Its art collection includes works associated with the Scuola Romana and the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo, placing twentieth-century Italian creativity alongside contemporary interiors.

The opening also reflects a broader transformation taking place in Rome. International hospitality groups increasingly see the city’s historic buildings as opportunities for distinctive luxury properties, combining an established architectural identity with the services expected by wealthy international travellers. For developers, adapting an existing building can create something that a new construction could never quite reproduce: an address with its own story.

Yet adaptive reuse also raises questions about the relationship between heritage and commerce. Restoring architectural features can preserve important elements of a building, but a change in function inevitably changes its place in the city’s social life. A former political headquarters, once connected with collective organisation and public debate, becomes a private commercial destination. Both uses belong to the history of the same city, though they reflect very different moments in Italian society.

That is precisely what makes Thompson Rome interesting beyond the hospitality industry. The hotel is not simply another luxury opening in a capital already accustomed to international visitors. It is a reminder that Rome’s architectural heritage includes not only the monuments of antiquity and the Renaissance, but also the buildings that shaped Italy’s modern political and cultural identity.

THE ITALIC TAKE

There is something wonderfully Roman about the transformation of a Communist Party headquarters into a luxury hotel. The irony practically writes itself. But the more interesting question is whether a city can give its buildings new economic purposes without making their histories disappear.

In this case, the restoration has preserved some of the building’s artistic and architectural identity. That is worth recognising, even if the transformation also reflects the increasingly commercial uses of historic urban spaces.

Rome has never been a frozen museum. Its extraordinary survival depends partly on its ability to adapt. The challenge is making sure that, when a building acquires a new identity, the city does not forget the one it had before.

Even when the new guests are checking in rather than attending a party meeting.

When Giorgia Meloni entered Palazzo Chigi in 2022, much of Europe looked at her with suspicion. She was presented as the latest sign of the continent’s rightward drift, an Italian anomaly with radical roots and uncertain intentions. Four years later, the anomaly looks rather more integrated into the system than many expected.

In its recent reporting, Le Monde revisits Meloni’s trajectory and frames it as a political repositioning of unusual significance. The argument is not simply that Meloni has survived. It is that she has moved from the fringes of Italian and European politics into a place of recognised influence. That, in itself, is already an important shift. Italy is not new to instability, rhetorical excess or governments treated abroad as provisional episodes. Meloni, by contrast, has forced European capitals to treat her as a durable interlocutor.

Part of this is the result of adaptation. Once in office, she behaved less like a disruptor than many feared. She maintained Italy’s Atlantic posture, supported Ukraine, stayed within the broad perimeter of European fiscal discipline and avoided spectacular institutional clashes with Brussels. For foreign observers, this looked like a familiar story: ideology in opposition, pragmatism in government.

But that is only part of the picture. The more interesting suggestion in the French reading is that the transformation did not happen only on the Italian side. Europe itself has changed. Positions on migration, sovereignty and borders that once marked the nationalist right have become more normal inside the European conversation. In that sense, Meloni did not simply enter the European mainstream; the mainstream moved in directions that made her easier to absorb.

This helps explain why her legitimacy abroad now appears stronger than many initially imagined. She is no longer interpreted merely as a domestic political curiosity. She has become, for some, a symptom of a broader European adjustment: a Union that still speaks the language of liberal norms but increasingly negotiates with a harder political grammar.

That does not mean the Italian prime minister has solved the deeper contradictions of the country she governs. Italy remains burdened by weak productivity, stagnant wages, demographic decline and structural fragilities that no diplomatic rehabilitation can erase. A government may become more acceptable internationally without fundamentally altering the national condition.

That is where the international fascination with Meloni sometimes becomes too flattering. It risks measuring success through external respectability rather than internal results. To move from the margins to the centre is politically meaningful. But it is not the same as transforming Italy. It may prove to be a historical passage, or simply a successful repositioning within a Europe that has itself become more tolerant of certain ideas than it once was.

THE ITALIC View

Europe did not exactly domesticate Meloni; it discovered that she was more usable than alarming. The real question is not whether she has become acceptable in Brussels, but whether that acceptance tells us more about her moderation or about Europe’s own shift. From an Italian perspective, international legitimacy is welcome, but it is also the easiest part of the job. The harder one is still domestic: productivity, wages, social mobility and a country that remains far more fragile than its new image of stability suggests.

The anger visible across several European countries may wear different national colours, but its emotional structure is increasingly similar. In a recent analysis, The Washington Post traces the unrest back to a broader loss of confidence among younger Europeans: the weakening belief that life will improve, or even remain as secure, as it was for the generation before them.

One figure stands out. According to polling cited in the piece, 52 per cent of Europeans aged 16 to 26 believe they will be worse off than their parents. That is not merely an economic concern. It is a political and cultural fracture. The post-war European promise was never only about growth; it was about advancement, stability and the expectation that effort would be rewarded over time. When that expectation fades, resentment becomes easier to mobilise and harder to contain.

Italy is not the only country affected by this condition, but it is one of the clearest examples of it. The Italian version of the problem has deep roots: modest wage growth, precarious entry paths into the labour market, low productivity, expensive housing in the most dynamic urban areas and delayed autonomy for younger adults. None of this is new. What feels newer is the degree to which resignation is becoming normal.

Italy has long balanced its structural weaknesses with other strengths: family support networks, quality of life, social flexibility, beauty, cultural capital. These remain real. They also help explain why the country can be deeply attractive to outsiders while appearing increasingly difficult to inhabit as a project of personal advancement for many of its own younger citizens.

This is one of Italy’s most revealing contradictions. For foreign professionals, retirees, digital workers or lifestyle migrants, the country often represents an enviable destination. For many young Italians, the same country represents a place where independence arrives late, careers advance slowly and the route towards security often seems to run elsewhere. It is not that one of these readings is correct and the other false. They are simply shaped by different relationships to the same reality.

The significance of the Washington Post analysis lies precisely here. It treats dissatisfaction not as a collection of separate outbursts, but as a wider European mood. The details differ from France to Spain, from Germany to Italy. Yet the underlying sentiment is common: a sense that the future is less generous, less accessible and less believable than it once was.

In the Italian case, the danger is not only the loss of talent. It is the erosion of confidence. A country can survive emigration, frustration and political disaffection for quite a long time. What is harder to recover is a generation’s trust that building a future at home still makes sense.

THE ITALIC View

Italy often congratulates its young for being talented, mobile, creative and resilient. It is much less capable of offering them a framework in which those qualities can translate into stable adulthood. That is why the national paradox is so sharp: the country remains desirable from the outside and disillusioning from within. Foreigners often see lifestyle, beauty and possibility; many young Italians see rent, low salaries and postponed autonomy. Both are looking at Italy. They are simply not looking from the same position.

Europe’s summer heat has become a public health emergency measured not only in record temperatures, but in lives lost. New research estimates that more than 50,000 people died from heat-related causes across 854 European urban areas between June and August 2026. Italy was among the countries most severely affected.

As Ajit Niranjan reports in The Guardian, researchers estimate that approximately 32,600 of those deaths were attributable to human-caused climate change. The findings suggest that rising temperatures are already producing consequences that European healthcare systems and cities are struggling to manage.

These figures require an important qualification. They are statistical estimates based on temperature and mortality models, not a count of death certificates explicitly identifying heat as the cause. Nevertheless, the methods allow researchers to assess a danger that conventional mortality statistics often fail to capture.

Italy’s particular exposure

Italy recorded an estimated 13,303 heat-related deaths, the highest national total among the countries examined. The impact was especially severe in urban environments, where dense construction, limited vegetation and buildings that retain heat can make summer nights particularly dangerous.

Heat-related mortality is not simply the consequence of exceptionally high daytime temperatures. Prolonged exposure, especially when nights provide little relief, places additional strain on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.

Age is a major factor, but vulnerability is also shaped by income, housing conditions, health and social isolation. Someone living alone in a poorly insulated apartment may face risks very different from those experienced by a household with effective cooling and access to support.

A problem beyond emergency warnings

Italian cities have increasingly adopted heat alerts and emergency responses. These measures are necessary, but warnings cannot compensate indefinitely for buildings that overheat, inadequate access to cooling or neighbourhoods with little shade.

The policy challenge extends into urban planning, housing standards, social services and the organisation of healthcare. It also raises difficult questions about public expenditure: preventing heat-related illness requires investment before the emergency becomes visible.

Better insulation, accessible cooling spaces, urban greenery and targeted assistance for vulnerable residents are not merely environmental improvements. They are potentially important forms of preventive healthcare.

What the figures should change

Climate adaptation cannot eliminate the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study attributes roughly two-thirds of the estimated deaths to the additional warming caused by human activity, illustrating why adaptation and emissions reduction must advance together.

But adaptation also needs measurable objectives. Governments should evaluate whether interventions reduce exposure and illness, which neighbourhoods remain most vulnerable and whether assistance reaches people who cannot protect themselves.

Italy’s experience demonstrates that extreme heat is no longer an exceptional summer inconvenience. It is an increasingly predictable risk, requiring sustained public policy rather than seasonal improvisation.

THE ITALIC View

Italy has traditionally treated summer heat as part of its Mediterranean identity. That cultural familiarity may now obscure a serious policy failure. When dangerous temperatures become foreseeable, the resulting harm can no longer be regarded simply as an unfortunate consequence of the weather. Protecting people from extreme heat should be considered alongside housing, healthcare and social protection. The measure of success will not be how many warnings authorities issue, but how effectively those warnings are translated into safer homes, neighbourhoods and lives.

Giorgia Meloni has achieved something unusual in Italian politics: durability. Her government has become the longest-serving in the country’s republican history, while her party has retained substantial electoral support. Yet longevity does not eliminate political vulnerability, particularly when the greatest threat may come from within the broader ideological camp that brought a government to power.

In a recent analysis for The Guardian, Riccardo Alcaro argues that Roberto Vannacci’s new far-right movement could undermine Meloni’s prospects in the 2027 election. The former general, elected to the European Parliament with the League before establishing National Future, is seeking support among voters who regard the governing coalition as insufficiently radical.

It is a plausible political risk. But it is not yet an inevitable electoral outcome.

A problem of arithmetic and identity

Italy’s coalition politics rewards alliances, and even relatively small movements can become influential when the competition is close. Vannacci does not necessarily need to surpass Meloni to damage her prospects. Attracting voters away from the League or discouraging cooperation within the right could be enough to alter the electoral balance.

Yet opinion polls are not election results. Voters may return to established parties, and the consequences of fragmentation depend on electoral rules, candidate selection and the agreements parties ultimately reach.

The challenge is therefore more complicated than a contest between two personalities. Meloni must decide how far she can accommodate a political competitor without changing the character of her own coalition.

The European dividing line

Alcaro identifies foreign policy as one of the clearest differences. Meloni has made support for Ukraine and cooperation with European and Atlantic partners central to her international position. Vannacci has advocated reopening relations with Russia and opposes further European defence integration.

These are not merely rhetorical distinctions. They concern Italy’s reliability within its alliances and the strategic direction of European security.

Differences over migration, social policy and national identity also matter. But the assumption that every voter attracted to Vannacci shares his entire programme would be simplistic. Protest votes, dissatisfaction with established parties and ideological commitment are not necessarily the same thing.

That distinction matters when assessing how a governing party should respond.

The danger of chasing every voter

A coalition may attempt to neutralise a challenger by adopting some of its language or policies. The strategy can appear attractive in the short term, particularly when opinion polls suggest that a rival is drawing support from its existing electorate.

But accommodation carries costs. It can unsettle moderate coalition partners, create tensions over foreign policy and leave the challenger free to demand still more.

The alternative — drawing a clear political boundary — also involves risk. Some voters may prefer the more radical option, while others may interpret the distinction as tactical rather than principled.

Meloni’s decision will depend partly on the size and durability of Vannacci’s support, neither of which can yet be treated as settled.

THE ITALIC View

The most revealing question is not whether Roberto Vannacci can defeat Giorgia Meloni (far from being the case), but how much influence a smaller political movement can acquire without winning power itself. Coalition arithmetic may reward radical challengers even when their electoral appeal remains limited. Meloni’s real test will be whether she can preserve a workable governing majority without allowing the demands of its most uncompromising potential partners to determine Italy’s political direction. That is a question of leadership, but also of institutional stability.

Italy is considering asking energy companies to contribute more to the public finances, as the government searches for ways to fund tax reductions and additional spending in its 2027–2029 budget. The proposal may sound straightforward: when energy prices rise and some companies benefit, part of those gains could help relieve the pressure on households and public finances.

The economic consequences, however, are less straightforward.

According to Reuters reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, the government is examining a further increase in the regional tax on productive activities, known as IRAP, for companies involved in producing, distributing and supplying energy. Another possibility is extending the existing higher rate through 2029.

Earlier this year, Italy increased the relevant rate from 3.9% to 5.9% for 2026 and 2027, expecting approximately €1 billion in additional revenue over the two years. No decision on a further increase has yet been announced.

The question is not simply whether energy companies should pay more tax. It is whether an additional levy would provide lasting relief without discouraging the investment Italy needs to reduce its exposure to volatile international energy markets.

A difficult balance

The government faces competing pressures. Higher energy costs affect household purchasing power and business competitiveness, while rising borrowing costs restrict the room available for public spending.

At the same time, some energy companies have reported stronger profits. That makes them an attractive source of additional revenue, particularly when governments are being asked to protect consumers from price increases.

But energy businesses are not identical. Producers, refiners, distributors and suppliers have different cost structures, margins and investment requirements. A broad increase in taxation may affect them differently, even when it applies across the same sector.

There is also a distinction between taxing exceptional profits and permanently increasing the ordinary tax burden. The former is intended to capture gains associated with unusual market conditions; the latter changes the longer-term economics of operating and investing in the sector.

Beyond the immediate budget

Italy’s dependence on imported energy makes this debate particularly consequential. Tax revenues can help finance short-term relief, but they cannot by themselves reduce exposure to future supply disruptions or international price shocks.

That requires sustained investment in generation, infrastructure, efficiency and diversification. Fiscal measures should therefore be assessed not only by the revenue they raise today, but also by their effect on the investments that could make tomorrow’s energy system more resilient.

The European dimension matters too. The European Commission is examining the possibility of an EU-wide levy on exceptional oil and gas profits. A coordinated approach could potentially reduce differences between national tax regimes, although its design and legal feasibility remain unresolved.

For Italy, the immediate challenge is to explain what additional taxation would achieve, who would ultimately bear its costs and how any resulting revenue would be used.

THE ITALIC View

Asking profitable energy companies to contribute during a period of economic strain is a legitimate political choice. But the quality of that choice depends on its design, not its popularity. Italy needs a fiscal policy that protects vulnerable households while preserving incentives to invest in a more secure energy system. The real test is whether a new tax would merely help balance the next budget or contribute to reducing the country’s vulnerability to the next crisis.

Italy has received an encouraging piece of economic news. Income inequality has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade. Yet behind that improvement lies a less reassuring figure: almost one in four Italian children remains at risk of poverty.

The contrast matters because it reveals something that aggregate economic indicators can easily obscure. A country can become more equal without becoming sufficiently prosperous or secure for the people living in it.

According to new Eurostat figures, Italy’s Gini coefficient — the standard measure of inequality in the distribution of disposable income — declined from 32.2 in 2024 to 31.0 in 2025. It is the country’s lowest reading since 2014.

The development was highlighted by Corriere della Sera in its 24 October article on inequality and poverty, drawing on figures published by Eurostat.

A lower Gini coefficient means that income is distributed more evenly. On that measure, Italy has made meaningful progress. The country has also narrowed the distance separating it from the European Union average, which stood at 29.2 in 2025, down slightly from 29.4 a year earlier.

But the gap has not disappeared. Italy remains more unequal than the EU as a whole, despite the improvement.

The number that changes the story

The most revealing figures concern children.

In Italy, 23.2% of people under the age of 18 are at risk of poverty, compared with an EU average of 19.6%. The Italian figure has fallen from 24.5% in 2019, but the difference remains substantial.

These are measures of relative poverty, not a count of children living in absolute deprivation. Eurostat defines the threshold in relation to a country’s median disposable income, meaning that the measure identifies households whose resources fall significantly below the national norm.

That distinction is important, but it does not make the figures any less relevant. Relative poverty can translate into sharply unequal access to educational opportunities, extracurricular activities, adequate housing and the ordinary experiences through which children participate in society.

For Italy, this raises a question that is more demanding than whether the latest statistics represent an improvement: how much economic insecurity should a relatively wealthy European country consider acceptable among its youngest residents?

Equality and prosperity are not the same thing

The apparent contradiction between falling inequality and persistent poverty is not really a contradiction at all.

The Gini coefficient describes the distribution of income. It does not tell us whether incomes are high enough to meet households’ needs, how readily families can absorb unexpected costs, or whether younger generations can improve their circumstances.

Two countries may have similar levels of inequality while offering very different living standards. Likewise, a country can register a more even income distribution even as many households continue to struggle.

In 2025, Italy’s overall at-risk-of-poverty rate stood at 18.6%, compared with 16.3% across the European Union. The improvement in income distribution therefore coexists with a comparatively high proportion of residents whose incomes remain below the relative poverty threshold.

Italy’s challenge is not simply to narrow the distance between the highest and lowest earners. It is also to improve the economic position of households that have too little income to begin with.

What the next set of numbers should tell us

Eurostat’s latest release deserves recognition for showing a genuine improvement. It would be misleading to dismiss a reduction in income inequality simply because other problems persist.

But the opposite mistake would be to treat a better national average as evidence that those problems are being resolved.

Future assessments should examine the indicators together: income distribution, poverty risk, the position of children and the extent to which public policies improve household finances. Each answers a different question, and none provides a complete picture on its own.

Italy is becoming somewhat more equal in the statistical sense. Whether that progress translates into more secure lives — particularly for children — remains a separate and more consequential test.

THE ITALIC View

There is a difference between a society becoming more equal and a society becoming fairer to those who start life with the fewest advantages. Italy’s improving inequality figures are welcome, but they should prompt closer examination of the people still left behind. A reduction in statistical disparities is progress; the ability of children to grow up without persistent economic insecurity would be a much stronger measure of success.

There is genuine progress in Italy’s public healthcare system. According to figures released on 22 October by AGENAS, the national agency for regional health services, the number of specialist appointments and diagnostic examinations booked through the monitored system rose from 19.7 million to 21.8 million during the first nine months of 2026. A greater proportion also fell within the maximum waiting times established for each priority category.

Those are improvements worth recognising. But they do not mean the waiting-list problem has been solved.

In his report for Il Fatto Quotidiano, journalist Alessandro Mantovani examines the other side of the figures: approximately four million bookings still exceeded their permitted waiting periods. The distinction matters because a healthcare system can become more productive without becoming sufficiently accessible to everyone who needs it.

The numbers behind the improvement

Between January and September 2026, 78.6% of monitored first specialist consultations were booked within their required time limits, compared with 76.9% in the corresponding period of 2025. For diagnostic examinations, compliance increased from 83.3% to 85%.

More than two million additional appointments and examinations were therefore scheduled within the prescribed timeframes compared with the previous year.

Yet the detail in AGENAS’s official report is revealing. Approximately 3.2 million bookings exceeded the applicable deadline by more than ten days, while another 858,000 fell within the first ten days after it. Together, they account for roughly four million late bookings.

It would be misleading to describe this as evidence of a system making no progress. It would be equally misleading to call the problem substantially resolved.

Where a patient lives still matters

The national averages conceal pronounced regional differences. In Basilicata, the report records approximately 99% compliance with waiting-time targets for first specialist visits. In Puglia, the figure is 55.3%. Umbria and Sardinia also remain below 70%.

Not all comparisons are straightforward. Regions differ considerably in how they assign medical priority categories, which affects the deadlines against which performance is measured.

A consultation classified as urgent must be provided within three days; a programmable appointment may have a maximum window of 120 days.

That makes the classification itself an important part of the story. If too many requests enter the least urgent category, apparently satisfactory waiting-time statistics may offer an incomplete picture of patients’ experiences.

The fact that a booking meets its administrative deadline is not, by itself, proof that the patient has received timely care in a broader clinical sense.

What the data still cannot tell us

There is another limitation. The current monitoring covers 14 categories of first specialist consultations and 22 types of diagnostic examinations. Follow-up appointments are excluded, and the figures do not provide a complete account of every healthcare service.

Nor does a booking record alone tell us what happens to patients who decide not to wait, pay for private treatment or abandon the attempt to obtain care.

These are not minor questions. A healthcare system may improve its performance indicators while some patients continue to experience serious barriers to access. Conversely, an increase in the number of appointments can represent meaningful progress even when waiting times remain unsatisfactory.

The challenge is to understand both realities without allowing one to obscure the other.

The latest AGENAS bulletin is an important step towards greater transparency. Publishing comparable figures makes it easier to identify weaknesses, recognise improvements and ask more precise questions about regional performance.

But transparency is a starting point, not an outcome.

THE ITALIC View

Italy’s healthcare debate is too often reduced to a choice between defending the public system and declaring it broken. The latest figures show why neither position is particularly useful. Progress should be acknowledged, but performance must ultimately be judged from the patient’s perspective. An appointment that satisfies an administrative target is not necessarily an appointment that arrives when it is needed. The challenge for Italy is therefore not simply to shorten waiting lists, but to ensure that improvements are experienced by patients across the country. A public service earns trust through what it delivers, not merely through what it measures.

The images from central Milan were of broken shop windows, burning barricades and police confronting young demonstrators in streets more accustomed to commerce and tourism. Yet the violence followed a march that had begun peacefully, bringing together grievances about living costs, housing and the future available to younger Italians. In “Milan braces for more unrest as debate intensifies over Italy’s ‘lost generation’”, published by the Guardian on 23 October, Angela Giuffrida examines the anger behind the clashes and the divide between young people with opportunities and those who feel excluded from them.

The distinction between protest and disorder matters. Masked groups looted shops and damaged property, actions that cannot be excused by economic frustration; the Associated Press also reported injuries to police officers and the use of teargas and water cannon. But neither should the behaviour of those groups be used to erase the concerns voiced by people who attended the demonstrations without resorting to violence. Public debate becomes especially unhelpful when everyone in a square is treated either as a victim of repression or as a potential criminal.

The government has responded with tougher security measures and the deployment of 500 troops to Milan, while the Guardian reports proposals and measures directed at young offenders and parental responsibility. The need to protect residents, businesses and peaceful demonstrators is real. Still, security policy answers only one of the questions raised by the events. The other concerns the prospects of young people living in an expensive city whose labour market, housing costs and social geography can place stable independence well beyond reach.

Giuffrida’s reporting brings attention to neighbourhoods and families rarely represented in the international image of Milan. Young Italians from working-class backgrounds and children of immigrant households may inhabit the same city as those who benefit from its success, yet experience a markedly different range of choices. That does not make unrest inevitable, and it would be unfair to portray an entire generation or community through the conduct of a violent minority. It does, however, make the language of a “lost generation” worth interrogating: lost to whom, and through whose decisions?

ITALIC’s view.

A city cannot police its way into offering opportunity, just as social hardship cannot justify destruction. The durable response requires both accountability for violence and a serious examination of access to housing, work, education and civic participation. Milan remains one of Italy’s great economic assets, but its success should ultimately be judged not only by what it attracts from abroad or displays in its centre, but by the future its own young residents can realistically claim.