It’s a new year and we have the usual occasion for meeting you.

Today is 11 January and it’s the first Council of Ministers and the first meeting with you. Thus “Happy New Year”. We really need good wishes for the New Year, we citizens, but also we Ministers. We who are “precarious” Ministers who are trying to do our duty and at the same time trying not to be pawns of the system according to which you always say “yes” when the ones talking are of the coalition and you have to always say “no” when they are from the other coalition.

As regards us of Italia dei Valori, this year we are even more committed to the themes we have always been pursuing, that are the generation exchange of those who do politics, who change nothing if they don’t change a few people, the fight against the abnormal waste and cost of politics, the functioning of the public administration, the fight against bureaucracy, transparency and the rule of law.

What did we do in this first Council of Ministers? As regards institutional decisions we did very little, in that we had a decree brought by Padoa-Schioppa relating to some controls by the Bank of Italy, and we put it off because if we put it into action with a decree law it would have crowded out Parliament that already has to deal with other things and then it would have ended up in festive spirit.

We should have done the reform of the honorary judges, a draft law presented by the colleague Mastella, but there is still too much tension regarding a fundamental issue: is it right that those who find themselves in a judging role without having taken part in a “competition” then end up as judges like those who have done a “competition”? OK I said that in “dipietrese” but that’s the idea. There’s pro and contra, because on the one hand they have the professionalism, on the other hand, they haven’t got through the “competition”. This needs further discussion and it has been put off to another Council of Ministers.
This Council of Ministers stands out more for what wasn’t decided or for what was decided outside the Council of Ministers. Even a few appointments were decided, but I’ll talk to you about these at the right moment, because everything has its “right moment”. Make a note of that.
A lot of things have been done out of the Council of Ministers. There was a meeting of the majority the day before, to look at the economic policy of this country, an important meeting that I would dare to define in a few words as “a joyful and warm meeting of the residents of a condominium” in which everyone found agreement in so many good intentions.
I got left with the bitter taste of understanding if we were all so good was it because we had said as much to “baby Jesus” or because we were afraid of not going home before Carnevale? Is it the fear of abandoning the “armchair” or a sudden explosion of political maturity?
I don’t know because there were 38-39 people. There’s something sweet about these meetings of the majority. Every time we meet, we discover that there’s an extra condominium resident. At the beginning of this legislature, there were 9 of us. Today I found so many people who surely represent themselves, at least with the vote they were not representing. I was present.
Everything that we decided on wages, which is an important thing for workers in regards to taxation was decided in words. Now let us see whether in fact all this will be done.
Another thing has been done by Italia dei Valori: we have shown all the things we managed to get through our actions in this budget law. Since they are so many, I invite you to click on our website to see how we cut the fat of politics.
In this the budget law Italia dei Valori created a saving of nearly one billion euros, 890 million euros, cutting some unnecessary expenses, such as eliminating the "circoscrizioni" in many towns.
Just think there are in Nuoro 13 constituencies for about thirty thousand people.
We were also able to achieve a reduction of 20 million in funding to political parties to make a few prisons. Perhaps it is better to do some prisons rather than give the politicians, maybe they could use them too.
Read on the blog, where you will find the fat of politics, as can be cut. Read it, tell us what you think and what more can be done.

I tagli ai costi della politica