What £3 of sausage tells us about Europe

A recent court case in Italy over a small amount of cheese and sausage may seem trivial, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But it speaks volumes for the state of the eurozone.

Earlier this week the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation (Italy's highest court of appeal) ruled that theft is not always a crime. In 2015, Roman Ostriakov tried to steal around £3-worth of food from a shop in Genoa. He was convicted and fined €100. The court has overturned that conviction on the basis that the crime was one of absolute necessity: the food was taken in "the face of immediate and essential need for nourishment".

Interesting? Shocking? There will be a range of reactions to this, for a range of different reasons. But the key point to take away is one made by another Italian paper, Corriere Della Sera: that there are a lot of hungry people in today's Italy and they can't all go to prison. This ruling simply reflects the courts adjusting to what is now "reality".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.