1999 has been a �hard� year for Italy, that has met a lot of difficulties in re-launching the employment.

The European Union has forced the Italian companies to a re-organisation, in order to face, with good possibility of success, the global competition. 

Unfortunately this phase has penalised the labour market and the unemployment remains substantially stable.

It is important to report that the Italian industrial system, making the right exceptions, was structured mainly in a patronal way. The biggest companies gave job each other and the home market was substantially protected by norms that often allowed monopolistic regimes.

With the process of European unification, the public administration was forced to start a privatisation of many enterprises at public participation and this would not have been successful if the budgets had not been put in order.

First of all, many public enterprises had to become limited companies, then it got necessary to slim the staffs through pre-retirements, stimulated dismissals and blocking of engagements. In the meantime the alert eye of Europe was looking to us.
Many other enterprises, even if they were not public, worked in a market substantially closed at the foreign competitors (just think about the Japanese automotive industries, which had been kept for years at the window).