Recently, a restaurant in the historic center of Palermo conducted an operation called "Dinner in the Dark". As can be seen through the video, all the customers in the restaurant that night enjoy dinner in a romantic candlelight. In reality, however, this is not a romantic event near Valentine's Day, but a protest against the high electricity bill.
Screenshot of the republic video
Synthesizing the Italian PalermoToday network and the "Republic" newspaper, this is undoubtedly a very special form of protest. That night, the restaurant's customers and friends were invited to bring candles and have dinner in the lights-out restaurant to express their dissatisfaction with the soaring electricity and gas bills. In fact, at a time when the economy and the restaurant industry were particularly fragile, soaring electricity and gas bills have become an "unbearable burden" for restaurants.
A founder of the restaurant said that inviting everyone to bring candles to the lights-out restaurant for dinner is in the hope that the media and the government will pay enough attention to this "catastrophic" livelihood economic problem and propose suggestions and solutions to help businesses and families facing difficulties. According to the founder, the cost of electricity in restaurants has increased from an average of 1,500 euros per month in the past to 3,500 euros in November last year, and to 5,000 euros in December.
What is doubly frustrating is that the "misfortune" of the restaurant does not end here -
One night, a few days after Operation Dinner in the Dark, the restaurant was suddenly severely damaged by an unexplained fire: furniture, tables, chairs, equipment, and paintings were badly burned down. After the police investigation, the possibility of deliberate arson was basically ruled out, believing that the fire was most likely caused by an electrical system failure.
Fortunately, at this time, the store finally ushered in a "bottoming out" – after the incident, the local association launched a fundraising campaign for the restaurant, and in less than a week, it received donations of 120,000 euros from about 1,300 enthusiastic people.
In fact, the high cost of electricity and gas has also brought a lot of pressure to vulnerable Chinese restaurants and Chinese families under the epidemic. Fortunately, the government has finally taken action in recent days: on the 9th, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi said when he went to Genoa to attend the event that new measures will be introduced in the next few days to help solve the problem of rising electrical costs for families and enterprises. Italian media said that the relevant allocation can reach up to 7 billion euros.
(Yi Riao original, Editor: Hua Jiayan, translation: Sasha, picture source see label, reprint please indicate Yi Riu: oushitalia)