Ho fatto due chiacchiere con Stephen Brown, corrispondente da Roma della Reuters.
Italian gerontocracy told to make way for young
By Stephen Brown
ROME (Reuters) – If Tony Blair were Italian not British, rather than retiring as prime minister at 54 he would probably still be climbing the lower rungs of the ladder to power.

Italy has long been described as a gerontocracy and, with pensioners crowding out the young and the birth rate the lowest in Europe, leaders who are well over retirement age could be the most qualified to understand their ageing electorate’s needs.
But youngsters, which in Italy means people in their 40s too, are growing impatient with a fossilised establishment where octogenarian ex-presidents issue policy tips littered with Latin and the same faces pop up in successive governments for decades.
“In Italy they tell you you’re young when you’re 42, which says a lot,” Ivan Scalfarotto, referring to himself, said from Moscow where he is human resources director for a U.S. bank.
“The situation is becoming unbearable,” said the Italian who contested 2005 primaries in the centre-left coalition now in power to highlight the inverted ageism of Italian politics.
He said Italy should take heart from France’s generational handover with 52-year-old President Nicolas Sarkozy succeeding Jacques Chirac, 74, or the progressive policies championed by Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, elected when he was 43.
Italian politicians, rattled by opinion polls showing faith in them is dangerously low, now seem to have woken up to the dangers of making people wait until their 50s for a grown-up job in politics, academia, medicine, commerce or the law.
“Why should talented 30-year-olds not be able to get into politics because our gerontocracy blocks their way?” asked the reformist Deputy Prime Minister Francesco Rutelli, who is 52.
New data showing that for every 100 Italians under 18 there are 141 over 65 has sparked serious concern about future pension payments and Prime Minister Romano Prodi — a sprightly 67 — has vowed to help more young people into the workforce.
He will set an example by not seeking re-election when his term ends in four years, because “Italy needs new leaders”.
His predecessor Silvio Berlusconi, 70, has no such qualms and is a pup compared to seven-times premier Giulio Andreotti, 88, or 98-year-old Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini — both lifetime senators whose votes can sway the fate of legislation.
“RETIRE!”
Young politicians, kicking their heels in a country where only one of the 945 members of parliament and Senate is under 30, hoped for a breakthrough with the birth of the Democratic Party this year from the merger of two parties in Prodi’s camp.
But when he announced a constituent committee for the new PD with an average age of 57, Defence Minister Arturo Parisi, 66, called it “an old people’s committee” and jibed: “I hope they can at least show that they are wise.”
“Italy is old, so are its politics,” read the front page of La Stampa daily the next day, alongside the equally symptomatic headlines “Unhappy Country” and “Democracy and Dinosaurs”.
With many centre-left leaders like Prodi drawn from academia, the recruiting ground for politicians suffers the same ageing syndrome. One newspaper reported that out of 18,651 university teachers in Italy, only nine were under 35.
In the public sector employing 3.6 million people, workers’ average age is over 46 and less than one in 10 is under 35.
It does not help that the education system turns out older graduates than elsewhere in Europe, or that younger workers often endure long “precariatos” (apprenticeships) forcing them to continue to live with their parents.
But Scalfarotto said Italy simply “prefers experience to talent”. When an institution is in crisis, “we always seek some grandfatherly figure, whether it is to edit a newspaper, head the soccer league or run the San Remo song festival”.
With many countries more concerned right now about prejudice against the old rather than the young, Scalfarotto said he did not propose “cutting off elderly people from society, but it is a problem when they don’t leave the young any space”.
To ageing politicians offering their sympathy, Scalfarotto had a simple message: “You want to do something? Retire!”