The European Central Bank's Letter

The text is a letter so the senders, Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi, perfectly know who the reader is and what he is like. The letter is addressed to the Italian Prime Minister and taking  his specific role into consideration, the letter under discussion  is a formal letter.

The salutation "Dear Prime Minister" reflects a very straightforward style and the conclusion is an euphemism to suggest to the addressee to carry out  the tips expressed. The body of the letter consists of thirteen paragraphs.

The first two paragraphs have the function to introduce the paragraph with relying on background information.. The first one starts the communication and expresses the reasons for writing: the letter is about the difficult economic Italian situation which needs to restore investors' trust.

The second refers to the Government Summit of 21 July 2011, something already happened. The thesis pursued in the paragraph is: Italy has to respect its commitments  to support fiscal sustainability and carry out structural reforms.

The function of the following paragraph is to introduce the list of tips to follow to improve Italy's situation. The numbers used refer to the  needs and letters give specific information about specific measures to take.

The first need regards the increase of competition in particular in public services' quality and a more suitable design of regulatory and fiscal system to support firms' competitiveness and labor  market efficiency. They suggest public services' liberalization, to allow firm-level agreement to tailor wages to firms' specific needs and a further measure is to establish an unemployment insurance system.

The second need involves measures to ensuring the sustainability of public finances: it's essential to consider expenditure cuts and reducing public employees’ cost. After that an automatic deficit reducing and borrowing placed under tight control is to carry out. By Parliamentary ratification the first and second needs should be taken as soon as possible with deadline at the end of September.

The third and last need is to take measures to overhaul public administration improving administrative efficiency and business friendliness: to use performance indicators systematically and to abolish or consolidate intermediary administrative layers as provinces.

 The measures suggested are essential to come out of the serious situation. The senders constantly emphasize the point using expression like "is essential to/as soon as possible/immediately/it is crucial to". The language is suitable to the economic domain, sententious, cold but efficancely direct.