Brussels and Ottawa Prepare a Mobility Pact, and Sicily Counts Its Young

The European Union and Canada are set to announce on Friday a new strategic alliance that would widen opportunities for Canadians and Europeans to live, study and work on the opposite side of the Atlantic, The Local Italy reported on Thursday evening. The outlet did not publish the terms, and the announcement was still a day away.

For Italy the question is which way such a door swings. The country's population is roughly 59 million and ageing, with a birth rate long below replacement, and the departure of young Italians has been a steady feature of its labour market rather than a crisis of a single season.

In Sicily, whose population is about 4.8 million, that departure has a long history: to the factories of the north in the postwar decades, and before that to the Americas. It continues in quieter form now, through the universities of Bologna and Milan and the job markets of Germany.