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Italy Today

Soccer

Soccer stands without rival as the national sport of Italy, but recent years have seen some changes to the beautiful game. On the positive side, Italy won its fourth World Cup in 2006, giving the country more world titles than any other this side of Brazil. But since then, soccer lovers have digested a series of unwelcome developments involving alleged match fixing, backroom deals for television contracts, drug scandals among players, and a rising level of violence between rival fans.

Italian professional soccer leagues are trying to put those issues behind them and focus on on-the-field play, where the Italian leagues rank with England and Spain as the best in Europe. One emerging positive trend is geographic parity. After several years of the top Serie A league being dominated by northern teams, along with a small handful from the central part of the country, success recently has been spread more evenly around the country, much to the joy of soccer-mad fans from the south.

The Beloved Lira

Italy was among a dozen European Union countries that switched to the euro currency at the start of 2002. For many Italians, the change was not a welcome one.

In day-to-day conversations, the euro is blamed for higher prices and for the handing over of more control of the Italian economy to bureaucrats in Brussels, the seat of the European government. The most common complaint is that many vendors simply took the old prices in lire and erased three zeros, meaning something that used to cost 1,000 lire (around 0.52 euro) now costs one euro.

Many Italians still value purchases in their beloved lira. Years after the switch, it is still common to hear someone in the midst of a negotiation argue the price in the now-dead currency, "Eight euros? But that's 16,000 lire!"

Politics

The political landscape in Italy is less stable than in any other industrialized nation. The country has endured a new government an average of about once a year since the end of World War II, and hopes are slim that the situation will change much in the near future.

This virtual turnstile outside the prime minister's office takes a toll on Italy in any number of ways: economic growth is slow in part because businesses are continually adapting to new sets of government policies, and polls show that rank-and-file Italians are increasingly cynical about their political institutions. As a result, they're much less likely to trust in or depend upon the government than neighbors elsewhere in Europe do.

National Parks

Italy boasts 22 national parks covering a total of around 1.5 million hectares (58,000 square mi), or about 5% of the entire surface area of the country—more than twice as much as 25 years ago. And a new park is added or an existing park is expanded every few months. (In 2008, three new parks were in line to join the existing 22.)

Part of the reason for the expansion has been a growing environmental movement in Italy, which has lobbied the government to annex undeveloped land for parks, thus protecting against development. But the trend is a boon for visitors and nature lovers, who can enjoy huge expanses of unspoiled territory.

Old Italy

Italy is the oldest country in Europe (worldwide, only Japan is older)—the result of its low birth rate, relatively strict immigration standards, and one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world. As of 2008, the average Italian was 42.5 years old, and the number keeps rising.

The result is a remarkably stable population: the total number of Italian residents rises just 0.1% per year. But the situation is putting a strain on the country's pension system and on families, since elderly family members are likely to live with their children or grandchildren in a country where nursing homes are rare.

The trend also has an impact on other areas, including politics (where older politicians are eager to promote policies aimed at older voters) and the popular culture (where everything from fashion to television programming takes older consumers into consideration).

The Black Market

Nobody knows how big Italy's black-market economy is, though experts all agree it's massive. Estimates place it at anywhere from a fourth to a half of the official, legal economy. Put another way, if the highest estimates are correct, Italy's black-market economy is about as large as the entire economy of Mexico or India, and if the black-market figures were added to Italy's official GDP the country would leapfrog France, the U.K., and China to become the world's fourth-largest economy.

The presence of the black market isn't obvious to the casual observer, but whenever a customer is not given a printed receipt in a store or restaurant, tobacco without a tax seal is bought from a street seller, or a product or service is exchanged for another product or service, that means the transaction goes unrecorded, unreported, and untaxed.

Television

For most of the last generation, the two biggest players in the Italian television business have been Mediaset and RAI. Together, they control six of the seven television networks and about 90% of viewer hours.

Mediaset is owned by media-tycoon-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's richest citizen, while the Italian government controls RAI. For years, these two giants dominated the airwaves in Italy. But, now, competition is slowly developing a presence on the scene.

The most obvious newcomer is satellite broadcaster Sky Italia, owned by News Corp., the world's largest media conglomerate. And rules requiring television broadcasters to switch to digital television technologies by the end of 2009 are partially aimed at freeing up frequencies for new broadcasters itching to get a place in the Italian market. Stay tuned.