Problems remain despite austerity

“Austerity plan passes amid confrontation” headlines Italian daily La Stampa, following the final adoption by parliament of a €53 billion package of budget cuts aimed at returning to a balanced budget by 2013. At the same time, dozens demonstrated in front of the building. The plan provides for slashing the number of civil servants, an increase in VAT, extending the retirement age for women, and has provisions to facilitate lay-offs, the paper explains. The paper notes the criticism expressed by the Confindustria, the Italian employers’ federation, on the absence of measures to stimulate growth.

In the process, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to pass another decree, aimed at restricting telephone surveillance in order to, among other things, shield him from court cases in which he is involved. [La Stampa notes](http:// http://www.lastampa.it/cmstp/rubriche/girata.asp?ID_blog=25&ID_articolo=9201&ID_sezione=&sezione=) on this subject that, very ironically, the Prime Minister has recently come under investigation for having used illegal telephone surveillance to harm a member of the opposition. “Governing means doing what is necessary, not what one wants,” La Stampa says, and asks of Berlusconi if he doesn’t want “to take a step back” and hand the reins to a technical administration, to show that he is up to the challenges that await Italy “after twenty years of cabaret which too often degenerated into a spectacle”.