Reputation and GDP on the rise, environmental awareness and the wounds of long Covid. The Rapporto Coop 2021 captures Italy as it is today and sketches the Italy of tomorrow.
Optimism, confidence in the future and environmental awareness. It is in this underlying spirit that Italy is preparing to face the post-Covid era. An attitude that dispels the gloomiest forecasts and even surpasses the most optimistic expectations — not without some important warning signs and reasonable anxieties. These are the broad trajectories outlined by the Rapporto Coop 2021 – Economia, consumi e stili di vita degli italiani di oggi e di domani, produced by the research office of Ancc-Coop (Associazione nazionale cooperative di consumatori).
A snapshot that explores the daily lives of Italians, seeking to anticipate and understand the next normal of our society, drawing on the results of two separate surveys entitled Reshaping the future, both conducted last August. In an effort to paint a picture of the present and sketch out possible future scenarios, the analysts involved, on one hand, a sample of 1,500 Italians representative of the population aged over 18 (18–75 years), and on the other, a panel from the italiani.coop website community made up of 1,000 opinion leaders and market makers who had used previous editions of the Rapporto. The report was presented to the press in a preview on 7 September in Milan by Albino Russo, Director General of Ancc Coop, in the presence of Marco Pedroni, President of Ancc Coop and Coop Italia, and Maura Latini, Chief Executive Officer of Coop Italia.
For many months, those colourful banners on balconies formed the backdrop to our days. "Everything will be fine," they promised us, almost like a mantra that in the hardest moments could even feel irritating. Today, however, we can say it: that mantra worked, at least in part.
To the worst crisis in living memory, Italy responded with the best recovery ever seen. And not only with a leap forward in GDP that exceeded expectations (forecasts suggest it could come close to 6 per cent) and exports surpassing pre-Covid levels, but also with a relay of national successes that repeatedly brought the Bel Paese to the top of the European podium.
From the Maneskin victory at the Eurovision Song Contest — the first Italians to win in twenty years — to the sensational triumph of the Azzurri at the European Football Championship, through to the historic gold medals in the men's 100 metres and high jump that became the crown jewels of a record-breaking Olympics (40 medals in total). These thrilling achievements were joined by a happy cinematic interlude, with the release of Luca, the first Disney Pixar film set in Italy, which made critics and audiences around the world fall in love — with our country too.
Sporting, musical and artistic achievements that, combined with the sound management of the pandemic, the vaccination plan and above all the aura of authority generated by Mario Draghi's premiership, have led 86 per cent of Italians to declare themselves proud to be Italian, and the great majority of executives (83 per cent) to believe that over the next three to five years Italy will strengthen its role in Europe. Not least, one particularly telling real-time figure stands out: online searches associated with the word Italy grew by 211 per cent in July 2021.
"Today, being Italian is perceived as something beautiful and positive," commented Marco Pedroni, saying he was pleasantly struck by the shift in mood recorded by the Rapporto Coop 2021, which portrays a people also more inclusive towards foreigners (79 per cent are in favour of welcoming refugees fleeing war and persecution) and more attentive to civil rights issues (83 per cent are Lgbt+ friendly). A rather telling snapshot shows Italians to be open towards people of different religious, political or football persuasions, yet little inclined to tolerate two categories in particular: conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers.
These waves of national pride and economic recovery have brought about a particularly positive turning point. From being Europe's most pessimistic people, as recorded by the Rapporto 2020, Italians have become the frontrunners of optimism, with 64 per cent of respondents placing a certain degree of trust in the future, and business owners displaying even more optimism than before Covid.
"The most heartening aspect to emerge from the Rapporto Coop 2021," comments Maura Latini, "is that Italians have been able to seize on the small and large positives of recent months to open themselves up to an optimism that helps when there are big challenges to face. This is a finding that doesn't solve problems, but that will help us to tackle them."
A new think positive, in short, in which more than seven in ten Italians are satisfied with their life in general, and around half of people are happy not so much about their own circumstances as about having gained an awareness "of the things that matter in life." Probably a lesson, learned at great cost from the pandemic, that has changed their perception and reshuffled their list of priorities.
To all this are added other very positive and unexpected findings relative to last year's gloomiest forecasts, showing a profound shift in attitudes towards others. There are 23 million Italians who harbour no resentment towards anyone (nine million more than in 2018), and four in ten say they trust other people. A figure that has grown sharply compared to the past (in 2017 it was fewer than two in ten), and one that identifies the family environment as the privileged point of reference to rely on.
Some of the trends already taking shape last year find further confirmation in the 2021 outlook, sometimes with an acceleration, in other cases with a scaling back. Starting with the great revolution of agile working, widely adopted during the lockdowns and for many people now the new normal. Here the growth forecast is as high as 95 per cent, with 9 million workers intending to continue working remotely, in a new balance between work and private life even after the end of the pandemic. This scenario goes hand in hand with the consolidation of so-called home nesting — the tendency to conceive of one's home as a comfort space to be shaped around the many activities of the day. 1.2 million Italians are thinking of buying a home within the next year, while 8 million are planning renovation and maintenance work.
Soft mobility will also continue to gain ground, with a decline in work-related travel and increasingly low-emission means of transport, with two in ten Italians set to replace their car or motorbike with a greener model in the coming years. The push forward of digitalisation, already under way at pace last year, will continue both in schools (where distance learning has made a virtue of necessity) and in e-commerce, which will keep growing, albeit at a more moderate rate (the forecast shows a rise of 18 per cent in 2021 compared with plus 45 per cent a year ago).
This heartening growth scenario, outlined with optimism by Italy's managerial class, is accompanied by an increasingly widespread awareness: the need for a great green revolution at a global level. This is also demonstrated by the number of countries that in 2021 officially committed to achieving climate neutrality: as many as 44, compared with 22 a couple of years ago. For the majority of executives involved in the Rapporto Coop 2021, too, there is no doubt that the development of the future must be driven by technological and digital innovation, environmental protection and the fight against global warming.
An urgent commitment, pressed on by the metaphorical countdown of climate change, which worries 79 per cent of Italians and which this year pushed the Overshoot Day back to 29 July (the day marking the exhaustion of the natural resources the Earth is able to regenerate in a year). And it is precisely the mounting scarcity of resources — such as water, arable land, raw materials and food — that is viewed with concern by the majority of executives, who fear the triggering of new geopolitical tensions and doubt the possibility of achieving the targets set.
Beyond the understandable reservations, 82 per cent of the panel believes that citizens can make a difference through eco-friendly actions, and four in ten respondents count commitment to the environment among the values to be pursued in the coming years.
In this generally positive climate, there is no shortage of critical issues, linked to the physical and psychological wounds generated by the pandemic. A condition that has been defined as long Covid and that causes insomnia, depression and eating disorders. Economic difficulties also persist in 2021 for 27 million Italians, forced to go without and to live with daily hardship that for 18 million of them could continue for some time yet, and that for 5 million will entail sacrifices even when it comes to food. This explains why, despite the positive trends, the recovery in consumption is struggling to take off. A factor compounded by employment growth that is still far too slow (+1.8 per cent in the first half of 2021).
"In this scenario an organisation like Coop has a great responsibility," explains Maura Latini. "That of managing to find common ground between what we offer — and I am thinking of our products, the quality within them and the accessibility of the price." A commitment described as "the challenge of challenges" by the chief executive of Coop Italia, at a historic moment when food retail risks being squeezed between falling consumer prices and the announced rise in raw material costs and industrial suppliers' price lists. "These increases are often presented as if they were simple facts," Latini pointed out during the preview of the Rapporto. "But beyond the objective causes, such as drought and flooding, there is also a great deal of financial and geopolitical speculation. It is certainly not easy to separate these aspects, but we will try, and we will not accept price rises that have no factual basis. A country with stagnant consumption cannot afford to allow increases that would generate significant hardship for families."
Another critical issue recorded by the Rapporto concerns the gender gap, which sees Italian women still as the most disadvantaged in Europe. A subject particularly close to Maura Latini's heart: this year she chose to change her job title to reflect the feminine form and backed the Close the gap – riduciamo le differenze campaign to promote inclusion policies. "The Rapporto shows that today there is greater awareness of the fact that this gender disparity represents a weak point for the country. Changing things requires commitment from legislators and businesses. We can do a great deal, starting with recruitment. To change levels of responsibility, company culture must change."
