PARIS — Italian supermarkets report an increase in shoplifting by first-time offenders, especially among the middle class and the elderly. The most popular target for rookie thieves: Parmesan cheese.
French shoppers, famously insistent about freshness, no longer snub foods that are close to the expiration date. Discovering an underground market for almost-expired products fished out of dumpsters, stores decide to keep the spoils on the shelves.
Spanish police detect a shift in car thefts, from luxury brands to the sensible, midrange models now in demand on the black market.
These are the signs of a slow-motion crisis in continental Western Europe. The street-level repercussions of the economic meltdown have been less brutal than in the United States or Eastern Europe, because of the strong government-backed social welfare network in France and its prosperous neighbors. But experts warn that the safety net is starting to fray as the global crisis persists, unemployment rises and benefits run out.
"France lost 90,000 jobs in January alone, a real dramatic jump, and we haven't felt the impact of that yet because those people will get benefits for a while," said Olivier Berthe, who directs Restos de Coeur, a charity that runs soup kitchens for the needy nationwide. "We get more and more clients, and the worry is that we haven't yet seen all the ones who will be coming."
The charity has served 12% more people this year than during the same period last year. In the rural heartland of France, there has been a sharp increase in demand at soup kitchens as work dries up in agriculture, construction and other sectors.
In a recent French poll, half of the respondents said they could imagine themselves ending up on the street.
If the American dream is opportunity, the European dream is equality. Europeans don't grow up believing that anyone can be elected president or build an empire out of a small business. But they trust the state to help make a middle-class lifestyle widely accessible with solid health and education infrastructures, ironclad labor protections and a generous system for the unemployed and the poor.
In France, the percentage of people beneath the poverty line fell steadily in the last 40 years, from 14% to 6% in 2000. During the last two years, however, the percentage has risen slightly, Berthe said.
