It basically means that they are backing away in a real way from their stone-conservative approach to national economics. Austerity politics, in other words.
This report also gives a glimpse of the kind of intensified guns-or-butter debates over military spending that we can expect to see intensify in Germany and other European countries over the next several years.
The report talks quite a bit about how underinvestment in the train system has caused a lot of delays in trains the last couple of years. That’s true, and it has had spillover effects in neighboring countries.
That also brought to mind a famous saying I had always heard but didn’t know until just a few years ago that it was a propaganda myth:
Say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. That was the famous last excuse for Fascism, conveying the idea that while dictatorship might not be very nice, at least it got things done.
It is an argument we may hear again following the election triumph of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia and its allies, who include neo-Fascists. After all those years of chaotic politics and corruption, perhaps what the country needs is the smack of firm government. Mr Berlusconi [the article is from 1994], people may be tempted to say, could be just the man to [instill] punctuality in those recalcitrant Italian train drivers.
But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable? The answer is no. …
In 1936 the American journalist George Seldes complained that when his fellow-countrymen returned home from holidays in Italy they seemed to cry in unison: 'Great is the Duce; the trains now run on time' And no matter how often they were told about Fascist oppression, injustice and cruelty, they always said the same thing: 'But the trains run on time.'
It is true,' wrote Seldes, 'that the majority of big expresses, those carrying eye-witnessing tourists, are usually put through to time, but on the smaller lines rail and road-bed conditions frequently cause delays.' ...
The notion that the trains were running on time was none the less vigorously put about by the Fascist propaganda machine.' (2) [my emphasis]
Notes:
Germany’s spending gamble Financial Times YouTube channel 07/24/2025. <https://youtu.be/J9k4D8cQEcU?si=-MZmxgqNOIXXdBEr> (Accessed: 2025-29-07).
(2) Rear Window: Making Italy work: Did Mussolini really get the trains running on time? Independent 04/03/1994. <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html> (Accessed: 2025-29-07).
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