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"At Friday’s Council of Ministers, there’s a news item: no discussion about pensions. As you know, there’s a big discussion that is risking to see the government and the majority going up, and above all the nerves of the country, for the people who don’t manage to get to the end of the month. The President of the Council had announced a proposal defined satisfactory for all the social players and I was among those curious ones waiting for this proposal. We didn’t talk about it, but we will be obliged to do so in the coming days because the decree on the “tesoretto” is about to come to an end: the only chance to get this proposal is precisely with this decree.
As regards the Ministry of Infrastructure, we have approved the regulations for the public contracts for supplies, the tendering procedures, the services: I have presented my proposal to the Council of Ministers, who approved it, and now it has to follow the long itinerary according to the law. Thus, the car has started on its journey.
A much more important text that has the green light from the Council of Ministers is the draft law to reduce the costs of politics. It would have been possible to do a lot more, but I signed up to it as it is necessary to start somewhere. These measures, that produce nearly a thousand million euro in reduction of public expenditure, are important and necessary. In the next few days we will read so many criticisms: there is still a lot to do. However I am proud to be able to say that within the Council of Ministers I have ensured that it is it is not possible to insert exceptions in the abrogation of a series of bodies. If that had been possible each one would have inserted their own exception.
I’ll read you a few examples of the regulations that have been approved: the public bodies must give up the shares in the companies in which they have interests when these are not carrying out activities that are part of the public activity; there’s been a reduction in the number of members of the bodies of corporate governance in companies with public capital; the costs of operating assets have been reduced, like the fixed capital to avoid abuses.
We have arranged a 20-30% reduction in the institutional costs of all elected bodies: the so-called “attendance fee”. It will be forbidden to have a position, for example, for consultancy, for those people or bodies who are already carrying out a service for the State, as well as in public companies or controlling companies, by parliamentarians and all the administrators of local bodies.
I believe that the first action to be taken is to reduce the number of parliamentarians and of ministers. Anyway, a lot has been done and will be done. I’m telling you now that Italia dei Valori, together with those even in the opposition who want to help us, will present an all-encompassing measure to reduce the costs and the waste even further. We will try to get the signatures of at least a hundred parliamentarians on the right or the left apart from my signature and Alemanno’s who have been the first to sign. The intention is to demonstrate that there can even be opposing positions but on the cost of politics we should not raise ideological barriers. Those who believe this, must act. If we collect at least a hundred signatures, Parliament will have to discuss it: we will see who really wants to slash the costs of waste."