Italy’s Decline in Live Coverage

Italy’s Decline on Live: Rai Tre’s program clearly explained why countries like Spain are surpassing us. Not only in terms of economic growth but also in wage increases.

Italy’s Decline: Energy Costs Are 37% Higher

The most depressing moment (among many) in Riccardo Iacona’s investigative video? When the footage showed Lazio president Francesco Rocca in front of the Stellantis factory gates in Cassino. He was explaining to a group of workers (where job preservation programs have dominated for years) that he would personally go to the Chinese Embassy to find companies willing to invest in the factory. This is something Spanish authorities have been doing for years at a much higher level (Prime Minister Sanchez has already visited Beijing four times). But rather than relationships, the Chinese focus on facts. One key factor explains why they invest heavily in Spain and not here: energy costs 37% less there. In an energy-intensive industry like automotive, this is already a decisive factor.

A battery factory was supposed to be built in Termoli, but instead…

And here we come to why energy is so much cheaper. Spain has invested heavily in renewables. It’s not a matter of right or left; it’s a matter of practicality. Here, everything is viewed as a political issue, and this government has had a very skeptical attitude toward green energy from the start. They’ve focused everything on nuclear power, if and when it becomes available, as well as on oil and its derivatives, with Giorgia Meloni constantly traveling to find gas and gasoline that are no longer available in many war zones. The result is that our energy-intensive economy, from tiles to artificial intelligence itself, is on its knees. Meanwhile, Spain is celebrating. There are extreme cases like the battery factories for Stellantis—one was supposed to be built at the former Fiat plant in Termoli, Molise, but nothing happened there. Instead, one was built in Spain with CATL’s Chinese partners.

They don’t give a damn about Italy.

Italy’s Decline: A Shared Responsibility

It would be unfair, however, to blame solely Meloni’s government, which has been in power for 4 years. The problems are older, and other parties are also responsible. For example, the regional governments. Iacona’s report showed how local communities in Spain work to attract investments, with specialized technical teams that handle dialogue with international partners and also speed up approval processes, which are always extremely slow in our country. Of course, the central government does not help either and limits itself to useless rituals like the Automotive Table proposed by Minister Adolfo Urso. It’s a sea of talk that drowns thousands of jobs. But business owners and unions could also do more by pushing to solve the problems instead of sticking to their own partisan agendas.

– Read also: Stellantis at record lows on the stock market, what’s happening?

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