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Italy
Buona fortuna
Feb 7th 2007
From Economist.com
Cleaning up Italian football is a tricky task
MESS with football at your peril in Italy. As the government meets on Wednesday February 7th to consider a package of tough measures to combat hooliganism, the prime minister, Romano Prodi, may be wondering if he has taken on one reforming effort too many. The radical measures could in theory ban fans indefinitely from the grounds of many of the country’s leading sides, dealing a heavy blow to the financial interests of one of Italy’s most powerful interest groups, soccer clubs. In a country where fans support their teams with near-religious fervour, locking supporters out of games could also take a toll on the centre-left’s already shaky popularity ratings.
The package was put together at an emergency meeting of cabinet ministers and soccer officials on Monday, while Italy was shocked by the death of a police officer in a riot at a stadium in Sicily three days earlier. Among the decisions agreed was that grounds should be kept closed until they met legal safety standards. A law that took effect in 2005, under the previous centre-right government, ordered stadiums to issue tickets bearing the names of the buyers and install turnstiles to prevent known hooligans from sneaking in. Only four of the grounds used for Serie A (the top Italian division) have so far complied fully. Among fans who risk being unable to watch their sides’ games are those of the Florentine club, Fiorentina, and the two great Milanese teams, Internazionale and AC Milan, the latter owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition and Mr Prodi's great rival.
Previous efforts to get Italy’s football clubs to tackle extremists (such as swastika-waving thugs who throng at certain games) have come to nothing. The level of violence—some of it politically motivated—at Italy’s football grounds is said by the interior minister, Giuliano Amato, to be still rising. Despite this, club presidents have been pressing hard for a re-think on the government’s draconian measures. Ivan Ruggeri, the chairman of one team, Atalanta, said clubs should simply stop playing till the government changed its mind. “Italy’s third-biggest industry cannot be penalised in this way”, stormed Aldo Spinelli, who chairs Livorno, another Serie A side.
Some football matches will resume, probably this weekend, though the government is keen to see changes. But as with other reforming efforts by the government, notably in the economy, tackling established interests is proving to be a painful and long process. Mr Prodi’s government is keen, for example, to promote competition and to cut regulation in the economy as a whole.
A recent package of rather timid proposals to cut petty rules that protect inefficient retailers has been met with threats of industrial action from existing businesses who fear their cosy positions are threatened. These new plans are limited: allowing hairdressers to stay open longer, or to ease the rules on where petrol stations may be placed. Yet they have already, this week, provoked owners of petrol stations, for example, to begin a series of two-day strikes aimed at bullying the government into backing down. Timid as the proposals are, they are all that Mr Prodi’s fragile ruling coalition, which depends in part on the support of the Democrats of the Left, the heirs of Italy's mighty Communist Party, dares to undertake.