Wealth & Money Quote by Romano Prodi

Calling Italy "certainly the weakest" among Europe’s big economies is less a technocratic diagnosis than a political act of framing. Prodi, a professor-economist turned prime minister and later European Commission president, is using the blunt comparative to shrink the room for denial. The word "certainly" matters: it pre-empts the familiar Italian debate culture where every statistic can be contested, every failure re-litigated as someone else’s fault. Certainty is a lever here, not a footnote.

The subtext is also unmistakably European. Prodi speaks from within a project that treats credibility as currency: in the euro era, markets and Brussels listen for signals of seriousness, not national pride. By placing Italy against "the big European countries", he invokes a peer group - Germany, France, the UK (at the time) - and turns weakness into an identity problem. Italy isn’t merely struggling; it’s falling behind its equals. That stings domestically, and it’s designed to.

Contextually, the line fits the long Italian pattern of low growth, high public debt, and structural rigidities - a north-south divide, sclerotic bureaucracy, and a business landscape dominated by small firms vulnerable to global competition. Prodi’s intent is to build permission for unpopular reforms: pension changes, labor-market adjustments, fiscal restraint. If Italy is the "weakest", then reform isn’t ideology; it’s triage.

There’s a quiet coalition-building move, too. By airing the weakness himself, Prodi tries to own the critique before opponents weaponize it - converting national embarrassment into a mandate.