Europe | The cash flows south

How Italy’s Mezzogiorno is benefiting from a flood of EU aid

It can’t spend it fast enough

Motorway in countryside near Segesta, Sicily, Italy
Still a long way to goPhotograph: Getty Images
|ROME

Aldo Altomonte sensed that something was wrong. The man claiming to be a postman and asking to be let in said that he had Mr Altomonte’s renewed driving licence. But Mr Altomonte had applied for it only three days before. And in Italy—let alone in Reggio Calabria, the main city of Italy’s poorest region, Calabria—nothing bureaucratic ever happens in three days. It took a neighbour who knew the postman to convince the elderly Mr Altomonte that it was all true.

Explore more

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The cash flows south”

From the August 24th 2024 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Europe

Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, speaks during a session at the Bundestag, on January 29, 2025 in Berlin

A day of drama in the Bundestag

Friedrich Merz, Germany’s probable next chancellor, takes a huge bet and triggers uproar

Russia says it captured 2 settlements in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region

Amid talk of a ceasefire, Ukraine’s front line is crumbling

An ominous defeat in the eastern town of Velyka Novosilka


François Hollande hopes to make the French left electable again

The former president moves away from the radicals


Germans are growing cold on the debt brake

Expect changes after the election

The pope and Italy’s prime minister tussle over Donald Trump

Giorgia Meloni was the only European leader at the inauguration

Europe faces a new age of gunboat digital diplomacy

Can the EU regulate Donald Trump’s big tech bros?