Let us take the case of Hans-Peter Jederman, your average German tourist just arrived in Rome for a fortnight of Mediterranean sunshine, ancient Roman sightseeing and warm red Chianti. What is the first thing that HansPeter and the wife do on their first morning in the Eternal City? Of course, they step out of their hotel for a morning stroll in the lovely warm July sunshine.
And there's the rub. Hans-Peter gets his first close-up look at Rome's notoriously chaotic traffic. He shakes his head in disbelief at the sight of a traffic system that seems to oscillate from grim gridlock to the Ben Hur school of artful anarchy. After a holiday in which he may notice that museums keep erratic hours, that few public officials speak German or English, that credit card facilities are not always available, that kamikaze style scooter riders do not wear helmets, that the government fell while he was in Rome and that every time he went to pay for a cappuccino he had to dish out literally thousands of lira, Hans-Peter may come to some startling conclusions.
He may agree that Italy is a magical, beautiful country, blessed with Mediterranean weather and a huge artistic patrimony, but he will probably conclude that he prefers to live and work in Dusseldorf. He will certainly breath a big sigh of relief that his life savings are in deutschmarks, not lira.
Put simply, when it comes to issues such as public finances, government stability and nationwide infrastructural efficiency, Italy has a serious credibility problem and not only in the eyes of your average German in the Strasse. Throughout the last two years in the run-up to Economic Monetary Union, due to start next January, that credibility factor has caused Italy, Italians and the current centre-left coalition government a seemingly endless series of problems.
By turns, influential figures such as German finance minister, Theo Waigel; Bundesbank chief, Hans Tietmeyer; European Monetary Institute boss, Dutchman Wim Duisenburg; and French president, Jacques Chirac; have all made sceptical noises about Italy's initial inclusion in the euro-club.
Each seeming slight on Italian chances has provoked a nationwide attack of outrage and hurt.
Perhaps, part of the problem was that no one ever expected Italy to even begin to get its house in order. Yet, the Italian treasury's end-of-year figures for 1997 make impressive reading annual average inflation at 1.7 per cent, GDP growth of 1.4 per cent and, above all, a deficit/GDP ratio of 2.7 per cent.
The more Italy, under the committed Europhile prime minister, Romano Prodi, has begun to get its notoriously runaway public finances under control in the last 18 months, the more Italo-sceptics have crawled out of the cupboard. Okay, so you have the deficit/GDP ratio under control, but what about the national debt/GDP 60 per cent ratio? Italy is currently at approximately 120 per cent. That, at least to Italian eyes, seemed to be the thrust of a recent observation by Hans Tietmeyer; an observation that, in Rome, looked like goalpostshifting.
Worse still was the most recent authoritative Italo-sceptic, Dutch finance minister, Gerrit Zahn. Media speculation that he had threatened resignation on the issue of Italian entry into EMU was such that at last Monday's meeting of EU finance ministers (ECOFIN) in Brussels, he was forced to make a remarkable statement saying that the Netherlands had no "historical or geographical prejudgment" regarding Italy. Even German chancellor Helmut Kohl at his bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Prodi in Rome on Tuesday was careful not to give Italy's EMU bid a ringing endorsement, saying only: "Italy's deficit reduction efforts have been well recognised but there's no point in philosophising now."
The seeming diffidence of senior European partners comes as a disappointment to an Italian public opinion which has tended to conceive of EMU membership as some sort of one-off entrance exam rather than a stamina and endurance test. Italian media coverage of the last two years has put much emphasis on the Maastricht convergency criteria (especially the deficit/GDP one) while tending to slide out of the "sustainability" question.
Sustainability, of course, begs the question of Italy's ability to stay the course. Commentators as diverse as the Financial Times and former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt have both recently pointed to the fact that key elements in the Prodi government's economic policy tend to be railroaded through parliament, if they go there at all. Such comments raise the awful spectre of political will and stability in a country which, after all, is now enjoying its 55th post-war government.
If, however, Italy was not to be included in the start-up of the euro, the Italian in the strada would have good reason to feel betrayed. Given Prime Minister Prodi's insistence on making EMU entry his number one priority, Italians have been rocked by $58 billion (£42 billion) worth of austerity measures since May 1996.
Italians have not only had to pay out a one-off euro tax, they have had to countenance change in their pensions systems, but they have also found that their petrol, cartax, phone bills and national health prescribed drugs all cost more. But it was the groundswell of pro-EMU opinion that kept Mr Prodi in the saddle.
Italians have long been pro-European, even if in the past they did not always have to pay so dearly for the privilege. Despite the current taxpayer cost of EMU, 73 per cent of Italians still pronounced themselves in favour of it in a recent EC poll, as opposed to 27 per cent of Danes and Britons, 31 per cent of Swedes, 37 per cent of Finns and 44 per cent of Germans.
All of which is to say that, despite HansPeter's concerns about Rome's traffic and parking, he may agree that rather than risk huge social unrest by excluding Italy, he will reluctantly include Italy in the euroclub. Hans-Peter can take comfort too from this week's government announcement that legislation is shortly to be introduced obliging all those exuberant scooter riders to wear helmets. Even Hans-Peter has to be impressed. No?
