Brexit: Bankruptcy for Italian students?

 ROME – The realities of a possible Brexit on Thursday are becoming ever clearer to Italians living and working in the United Kingdom. A report in Il Messaggero looks into what draws Italians to Britannia’s shores and the implications that a rupture with the EU might bring.

 Close to half a million Italians living in the UK for reasons including study, work and investment, are waiting with baited breath for the definitive decision of the referendum on June 23. While there is a high level of anxiety surrounding the eventualities of a vote to leave, Italian expats are displaying a sense of level-headed pragmatism as they look to understand how Brexit would affect their everyday life.

  The Italian Association of Residents Abroad (AIRE) has noted a 50 percent rise in numbers of registered members in the lead up to Thursday’s vote, giving a total of 264,000 registered in England and Wales and a further 16,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. These figures however, only mark a fraction of Italians living in Britain, where London is in fact the “seventh Italian city, sitting between Genova and Bologna.”

 The attraction of the UK as country of residence for the Italians lies in its “simple and efficient bureaucracy”, Il Messaggero reports. London in particular is credited as being “an active and industrious city” in which “Italian entrepreneurs have been able to flourish.” In 2013 alone, Italian investments generated a 24.4 billion turnover and employed a workforce of more than 48,300 people. In particular the automotive, air and energy industries are of note, which represent 66 percent of total Italian investments.

 These figures have been increasing year-on-year, showing a snowballing level of Italian investment and contribution in Britain, which despite a recent flux of middle-aged Italians retuning to their homeland, have not been dented.

 The question of a possible Brexit does not pose a universal problem to businesses: Maurizio Bragagni of Tratos, a telephone cable company said that “it would result in an elimination of much external competition” to whom they lose out, being a smaller business. However, he adds that a leave vote would come at the “expense of the people” given the need to cut welfare that would arise to maintain a competitive position on the world stage. Britian “would become a large Singapore where wealth is celebrated but those at the other end of the scale are forgotten.”

 The implications of a Brexit for the Italians living in the UK would largely be the same as would affect everyone. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has warned of an 18 percent increase in house prices and a slowing-down of the internal market. While those in favour of the Leave campaign hope to allay fears by saying that there will be a two – three year delay in changes to Britain: the time for London to negotiate fully its divorce from the institutions in Brussels.

 Largely it appears that for those who add to the country, in terms of fulfilling fundamental services such as doctors, nurses and teachers (of which there are over 26,000 Italian) the eventuality of a Brexit would not change much. However, for dependents, such as young Italians who have come to the UK to study, a vote to leave carries with it a greater risk – an increase in annual study fees to around 35,000 Euros. For the 10,525 Italian students in the UK, that would be a tough pill to swallow.

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