Italy Is Cycling Toward More Trouble
The country’s generous bike subsidies raise the question of how it might spend the proceeds of any EU recovery fund. The “frugal four” are watching.
Bikes for everyone.
Photographer: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFPThe Franco-German plan for a 500 billion-euro ($548 billion) “recovery fund” for the European Union has raised the hackles of a group of smaller countries, made up of Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. The so-called “frugal four” believe the EU should only loan the money to the countries most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, rather than giving it away in grants as has been proposed by President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel.
At the heart of the concerns of more fiscally cautious northern European countries is whether needier southern states such as Italy and Spain will spend the emergency pandemic cash appropriately. Italy, for example, has just promised to subsidize the purchase of new bicycles for all of its city dwellers — giving back 60% of the cost up to a total subsidy of 500 euros ($545). That would buy you a pretty nice bike and might look overly generous even to those who believe the EU should be clamping down on carbon emissions.