Rome makes Renzi blush

The Italian leader is shying away from debate about Rome’s decay.

For a prime minister who wants to raise his profile in Brussels, few things are as embarrassing as having the nation’s capital at the center of a debate in major newspapers about dirty streets and a revival of the mafia.

That’s the predicament in which Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, now finds himself.

In recent days the decline of Rome has been highlighted by cover stories in the New York Times, Le Monde and other major newspapers. Italy’s leading daily, Corriere della Sera, wrote this week that there is “a big chunk of the international credibility” for the government in the Rome debate.

Fighting against a months-long slide in his popularity, Renzi, a former mayor of Florence, is trying to distance himself from the controversy.

“A story like this affects the image of the country so, for a prime minister who relies so much on communication, it is naturally a big blow,” said Sergio Cofferati, a MEP who left Renzi’s Democratic Party and is now one of his left-wing opponents.

The Italian capital has been in the spotlight for months after investigators uncovered evidence that the mob has infiltrated the city’s administration.  This activity has little to do with Cosa Nostra, Camorra or ‘Ndrangheta, the three mafias that dominate much of the poor south.

The Rome brand of organised crime is different; its grasp is more tentative and, so far, violence is rare.

But while the presence of the mafia in large parts of the country is taken for granted, until recently organized crime had not quite infiltrated the capital. So it came as a surprise to some that criminals could succeed in influencing contracts for public services and refugees centers in Rome.

“Even for a country more than accustomed to such scandal, the revelations have come as a shock,” wrote the New York Times.

The investigation, which has involved also members of Renzi’s Democratic Party, has focused attention on other more practical problems with public services in Rome.

These shortcomings are about to be thrown into even sharper focus: starting in December, the Eternal City will host an extraordinary Jubilee, a tradition which has elements dating back to the Old Testament, that will attract even more tourists — and place Rome’s creaking infrastructure under greater pressure.

 

All of this makes the Italian prime minister uncomfortable, complicating his undeniable ambitions on the European stage. Renzi has been angling to win favor with Germany and France in a bid to move beyond austerity measures for struggling eurozone countries like Italy.

Part of the problem is that Renzi does not have the authority to sack Rome’s mayor, Ignazio Marino, who is a member of his party but is widely considered honest and not directly tainted by the mob probe. For now, he can only try to distance himself from Rome’s increasingly tatty image.

“I do not want to get involved in the discussion over Rome,” Renzi said on Monday. “I want to talk about reforms and the country and not about [Rome’s mayor] Marino.”

The electoral timeline is not on his party’s side.

Surveys show that, if Romans voted now, the winner would be the candidate of the anti-establishment, anti-euro 5Star movement, which is already the second biggest party at a national level.

That outcome would not be a shock: the condition of the city, which in recent years has been largely controlled by left-wing mayors, is described as appalling even by the most jaded citizens, and there is no short- or even medium-term fix.

“If the deadline to fix Rome’s problems is 24 or 36 months, not even Jesus Christ can manage to change Rome in such a short time,” argued Carlo Bonini, an investigative journalist at Rome-based La Repubblica, who for years has been digging into the capital’s malpractices.

It is common to stroll around the narrow streets of the city center and see piles of garbage and sometimes rats. Public transport is a nightmare, with long waiting times.

Rome’s main airport, Fiumicino, mirrors the situation of the city. On Wednesday a fire caused delays, with many flights canceled, following by a blackout halting operations on Thursday.

“Rome has never been in this condition,” complained Giulio Sapelli, an economist who is a columnist at Il Messaggero, Rome’s biggest daily. “And the deeper corruption I am afraid has not even been unveiled yet,“ Sapelli told POLITICO.

In the face of this, public confidence in Renzi, according to a survey published on Wednesday by the daily La Stampa, has declined to 35 percent compared to 58 percent when he took office in February last year.

He is still more popular than his rivals, but the same survey shows that now Italians have more faith in Alexis Tsipras (61 percent), Angela Merkel (56 percent), David Cameron (46 percent) and Mariano Rajoy (36 percent).

To regain popularity Renzi has promised new tax cuts while reducing public debt, but the announcement has been received with skepticism by many analysts.

Until recently the 40-year-old Italian prime minister had been promising that from September he would start a campaign in Brussels to push Europe to focus more on economic growth and less on the German-prescribed austerity forced on Greece.

He hopes France will join forces with Italy on this front, drawing lessons from discussions about Greece, when Paris and Rome teamed up to convince Berlin to keep Athens in the eurozone. Renzi has also been courting Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But, with his popularity declining, and morale weighed down by the troubles affecting Rome, Renzi seems to have trimmed back his ambitions. Talking to foreign ambassadors this week, he forecast that Italy will be “leader in Europe.”

Asked when, however, Renzi replied: “In 20 years … if we do what we have to do.”

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