Euro crisis has Italy pensioners worried

Reporting from Milan, Italy — 

The white-haired ladies in fur coats slipped into a pinochle game just as Carlo Filipazzi was recalling those days when he marched with the Italian army through the frost and fog toward Venice. He survived malaria, Fascists and Nazis and then spent 42 years making refrigerator parts.

His Europe went from viciously splintered to reluctantly unified; these days, though, Filipazzi’s pension isn’t what he thought it would be and there’s trouble on the continent over heavy debt, immigration and the tumbling euro.

The financial crisis in Greece, with its messy street protests, is testing the strength of the 27-nation European Union and vexing populist parties that view economic integration as a threat to national sovereignty. The air is noisy with lofty principles and talk-show theatrics over the future and identity of Europe.

But the card players and raconteurs whiling the hours away in a 500-year-old villa turned pensioners’ recreational center spend less time pondering their European-ness than they do fretting over why the euro buys them fewer cuts of chicken than their lire once did.

There has long been a sense that joining the euro club to compete against the U.S. and rising Asian markets would bring economic security and rewards even as it whittled, ever so slightly, national identities. Instead, the specter of Greece dragging down the whole Eurozone has highlighted the quiet struggles faced by retirees and workers who are spooked by globalization and feel abandoned by the once cozy welfare state.

“What happened in Greece?” said Linda Lodi-Rizzini, her wrinkles hidden behind big sunglasses. “I’m Italian. The European Union interests me to some extent, but my real concern is healthcare, the cost of living and public services. . . . I don’t know if the EU can solve this. We’re all from different countries with different ways of thinking.”

Across town at the indoor farmers market, greengrocer Mauro Laurus stood beneath strands of dried tomatoes. “This crisis is killing us all,” he said. “When my customers watch TV they get scared and terrified, which causes them to spend less. It’s not just Greece, but in Italy people are unemployed and there are problems.”

Italy, burdened for years by high debt and low growth, appears to be in better shape than Spain, Ireland and Portugal, countries whose financial straits further jeopardize the 16 nations that use the euro. Most of Italy’s debt is held domestically; its banks have not failed, and the government and its citizens have been prudent.

But some economists say Italy’s outlook is precarious enough to tip the country into another recession.

The mood here is as if apprehension has been folded into wallets alongside emergency cab fare. When euro notes replaced the weak lira in 2002, Italians were tied to countries with stronger economies, such as Germany, but their buying power decreased. This agitated the deep fault lines between Italy’s prosperous north and its poorer south.

The populist Northern League party considers Rome a spendthrift and for years has been calling for increased fiscal autonomy for a north symbolized by fashion houses, investment firms and Alpine ski slopes. That battle intensified with the advent of the euro, which meant the flush north would be strapped not only to the Italian south but to countries such as Greece and, eventually, new EU members from the former Soviet bloc.

“The Greek crisis is a sign that you cannot make unions from scratch. You can’t invent them,” said Davide Boni, a Northern League member and the director for planning and development in the Lombardy region. “We have different populations, cultures, different realities. And now by opening the union up to Eastern Europe and even possibly Turkey, it will get even worse.”

He searched for a metaphor with sly Italian aplomb: “Imagine someone who’s ridden a bicycle all his life and suddenly you give him a Ferrari. This is what it’s like allowing certain countries into the EU.”

The anti-immigration Northern League was once a provocative voice on the edges. Today, it’s a crucial player in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition government, a reminder that Italy balances between its EU obligations and the aspirations of those calling for domestic reform and fewer European entanglements.

“The EU is a reality,” Boni said. “But the currency of a country is a symbol of its identity. We have lost that. And now we’re seeing a unified monetary system in which the weaker economies are clashing with the stronger ones. The speed with which the union is growing is killing us. If we don’t reform our system in Italy, it will break us, and even the Italian north will crumble under the weight of euro crises.”

Silvana Bonini doesn’t follow such intricacies. Her husband died 40 years ago; tears still well up at the mention of his name.

She lives on a pension of about 500 euros a month, barely enough to cover expenses. She moved in with another man, not out of love but because he draws a large retirement check. She sat in the recreation center, saying she could only spare two minutes to talk, but somehow it became much longer.

“I was born poor so I guess I’m not suffering that much,” said Bonini, who with Filipazzi and a few volunteers runs the center, which has a dance hall, card tables, an espresso bar and a room where women play bingo with corn kernels. All 700 or so members are pensioners.

“If you don’t open the center exactly at 2 p.m., you’re in trouble,” she said. “They don’t know where else to go. When most of them leave here, they won’t speak another word until they come back tomorrow.”

Bonini left to tend to things. Filipazzi strolled outside in the winter damp. “I guess our fear is that after Greece, Spain and Portugal may start failing and then Germany may slide a bit,” he said. “So far, though, Italy looks OK, but we still don’t sleep well at night.”

He slipped into a white tent covering two boccie ball lanes. He explained that there are many layers to a proper boccie ball lane; he noted too that the other old guys -- Filipazzi is 88 -- have threatened to beat him up if he wins another tournament. He laughed, pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, ran a hand through his white hair.

The world war was so long ago, but Filipazzi resurrects who he was back then, when he recovered from malaria and marched toward Venice, back when Europe was a scary place where bayonets came at you through the fog.

jeffrey.fleishman

@latimes.com