Reuters Pasquale Brandi owns a 130-year-old pharmacy in the center of the southern Italian city of Potenza, on Via Pretoria, the street where the townspeople take their evening stroll or “passeggiata”. Despite the heavily frequented central location, revenue has been falling since sales of non-prescription drugs were deregulated in 2006, and as the country heads into a prolonged recession things have got worse, he said. These drugs can now be bought at so-called “para-pharmacies” that also sell soaps and cosmetics, as well as in special sectors of some supermarkets. If prime minister and former European competition commissioner Mario Monti gets parliamentary approval for his so-called “Grow Italy” measures to open up the country's highly regulated services sectors, then Brandi said he may have to let go both his employees. “I feel like a dog chasing his tail,” said the 43-year-old, who runs the pharmacy with his sister, Stella, also a pharmacist. They inherited the pharmacy and the licence to run it from their mother, who in turn received them from her father. Monti's reforms are intended to encourage competition by loosening the strict rules which govern a host of professional groups in Italy, from pharmacists and journalists to notaries and taxi drivers. However, his efforts to open up the “closed shop” mentality that has grown up behind the professions is being fiercely opposed by the insiders who benefit from the way things have worked for years. The first set of deregulation measures came up for discussion by the cabinet on Friday and Industry Minister Corrado Passera says similar packages will be passed every month. With Italy in the frontline of the euro zone debt crisis, the stakes are high. Monti is desperate to convince markets that a chronically sluggish, hidebound economy can be reformed, even if some commentators question the growth-boosting potential of the raft of micro-measures. “Maybe liberalising taxis and pharmacies won't have a big impact on growth, but not doing it would give the impression that Monti can't even liberalise taxis and pharmacies,” said Alberto Mingardi, director of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, a Milan-based free-market think tank. __
