Italy Set To Cut Public Holidays For Economy
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Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti plans to cancel at least three public holidays from the national calendar so as to improve economic productivity, reported Sky News on Wednesday, with the nation’s public debt now spiralling up to more than $1.5 trillion.
Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti plans to cancel at least three public holidays from the national calendar so as to improve economic productivity, reported Sky News on Wednesday, with the nation’s public debt now spiralling up to more than $1.5 trillion.
According to the report, Monti is considering scrapping a number of secondary holidays – most notably Boxing Day (December 26), Republic Day (June 2) and Liberation Day (April 25) – after studies had shown that taking away a working week worth of holidays would raise GDP by as much as 1 percent.
Additionally, while the “main religious festivals such as Easter and Christmas” were unlikely to be affected, other such as Epiphany (January 6) and the Immaculate Conception (December 8) were believed to be under threat.
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Italy has a total of 11 recognised public holidays a year, though, according to Gianfranco Polillo, a junior economy minister, Italians spend as much as three months a year on holiday.
Speaking to La Repubblica newspaper last month, Polillo added that he only reached this conclusion after dividing the total number of hours worked by the number of workers.
“And I discovered that an [average] worker is in the factory for nine months and for three months, more or less, on holiday,” Polillo said, as cited by The Telegraph.
[quote]”We’re in the bel paese [beautiful country], my dear friend…That’s what they call it, and that’s how we [Italians] plan to be able to continue – accustomed to leisure,” he later noted, as quoted by The Guardian.[/quote]Accordingly, Prime Minister Monti, along with Polillo and undersecretary Antonio Catricala, hopes to push the proposal to cut public holidays at a cabinet meeting next week.
“I hope that this proposal is seriously considered because this would be one of the key ways of resolving the economic crisis,” told Polillo to Sky News.
Nevertheless, numerous politicians and religious groups have already expressed outrage at the plans.
An editorial in Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference, for instance, slammed the idea and described the government’s proposal to be akin to “a steam roller powering through the calendar which for many Italians does not even contain Sundays any more.”
[quote]”Civil and human richness in religious festivals are worth more than 1 percent of Gross Domestic Product,” the paper added.[/quote]Related: Italy Cuts $5.6 Billion From Budget To Avoid Sales Tax Hike
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Armando Cirillo of the Democratic Left went on to say that the plan was “useless and dangerous” as it would affect tourism and have a negative effect on the economy as a result.
The most compelling statement though came from the National Association of Italian Partisans who called for national traditions to be left intact.
“We have no objection to citizens being asked to make sacrifices in what is a difficult time for the country but you cannot ask them to renounce history and the foundations of what our society is based on, that is too much,” said the organisation.
“These holidays represent the best of our past, the values on which our republic was founded on, they are in a word history and they should not be touched. You cannot tell us that there are no other ways of boosting productivity and increasing growth.”
[quote]”The country should be left its history and it should be allowed to conserve its values, values that the majority of the country are fully supportive of, that is what we are asking the government to remember.”[/quote]
