To put it into the words of my father (Italy early 90s), "the Euro will be good for us because our politicians will have to stop stealing". But they didn't and we kept voting for them. This is the problem in Italy. Internal, not external. Then other countries can take advantage of it, that's the way the world works.

> Until the early 1990s, Italy enjoyed decades of relatively robust economic growth

This is painting just one side of the story. Look up the graphs for debt as % of GDP in the same years.

Here they are:

https://tradingeconomics.com/italy/government-debt-to-gdp

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rj28mXbk6V8/TsEC58hZftI/AAAAAAAAA...

Sure, we were growing, but more than that we were growing our public debt. I'm no economist, but this doesn't seem the sign of a healthy economy to me.