FOR a small firm just breaking into foreign markets, it was a big deal: one of Italy’s cities wanted a new leisure facility. Then political power shifted and the new council scrapped the project, without any compensation for losses running to around €100,000 ($ 140,000). The firm’s bosses turned to their Italian lawyer, who advised them to do nothing.Why? Because it would take years to come to a judgment and, even if they won, it would not be worth it. The sluggishness of civil justice is a big reason why the Italian economy is still not growing. On July 14th Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said that speeding up the courts would be one of the most effective, and least expensive, reforms that Italy could undertake. According to the World Bank’s “Doing Business” survey, it is harder to enforce a contract in Italy than in Haiti and over 100 other countries.“There are defence companies that export all over Europe, but not to Italy, because they believe that what they make will be counterfeited and that to get redress will take many years,” says a commercial diplomat. The difficulty of debt recovery is a bar to foreign direct…
