Big mountains, small mice

摘要

When a hard-pressed prime minister uses every trick in the book to ram through painful changes, some progress is eventually made; that is as true in Rome as it is Paris. But in Italy, the struggle is even harder, and the fruits more modest. On July 28th, the Italian parliament approved the first structural economic reform to be enacted in the three years that Silvio Berlusconi's government has been in office. The new law, which changes the pension system, is not exactly radical. It raises the retirement age from 57 to 60 and does not take effect until 2008. But thereafter it should save the treasury around 0.7% of GDP a year, and it goes some way towards eroding Italy's huge debt (of 106% of GDP).