Alitalia and Fincantieri risk paying dearly for the attacks of the 5 Stars on France.
The airline still has a long way to go to get to yet another rescue and until a few days ago it seemed that Air France KLM could also be in the game. As Repubblica writes, the negotiations for an entry of the French carrier into the capital of Alitalia (probably together with Ferrovie) were well under way. The operation would have allowed the yellow-green government to avoid the complete nationalization of Alitalia, but the new front opened between Rome and Paris risks blowing everything up. In fact, Grillino leader Luigi Di Maio (in the role of Minister of Economic Development) is dealing with the dossier, who for some time has not missed an opportunity to attack France, accusing it of practicing a sort of financial neocolonialism in Africa.
The other and more relevant industrial issue is the one that concerns Fincantieri. The shipbuilding giant is forging an alliance with the French giant Stx-Chantiers de l'Atlantique, but it seems that the new tensions on the Italian-French axis have already caused some slowdowns on this front, which moreover concerns a very delicate sector in strategic terms (The nuclear submarines of the French Navy are also manufactured in the Breton naval center of Saint-Nazaire). The operation also has ainvestigation by the European Commission, which intervened after requests from the antitrust authorities of France and Germany.
Alitalia and Fincantieri, however, are only the two most striking cases. In reality, the economic relations between Italy and France are so deep and ramified that any political-diplomatic crisis would risk causing particularly serious commercial damage.
In Europe, France is Italy's second trading partner after Germany and trade between the two countries increased by 8,3% in 2017, exceeding 76,6 billion euros. Moreover, it is Italy that gains the most from this relationship, boasting a surplus with respect to its French cousins of 6,7 billion euros.
If trade were not enough, it should be remembered that around 1.900 companies active in Italy, which employ 250 people, belong to French groups, while our country has around two thousand companies across the Alps, with more than 100 employees.
