16 November 2007

Bureaucratic Italy

I’m publishing this letter sent to me by Ettore, one of the many Italians living and working abroad.
Ettore writes from Silicon Valley where Google has launched an important world-wide initiative for the development of a mobile platform.
Italy is excluded from this. The reason is the bureaucracy that oppresses our country.
This train that we have missed has very serious consequences and the evaluation is very important: bureaucratic countries are excluded from innovation and from development.

”Dear Di Pietro,
As you will know, Italy has been excluded by Google from the competition connected to the new mobile platform, called Android. Thus we are knocked down before we start the race for 10 million dollars that could have come to Italy. I would like to point out that Italy is the ONLY one, I repeat, the only State in the world that is excluded because of non-political reasons. (OK, even a part of Canada is excluded, but that’s just a part.) The reasons are the usual ones, the bureaucracy and the laws that are of another era that oblige Google to have a dialogue with Ministers, notaries, State monopolies and so on, with the inevitable result of a long and absurd process.
Google’s position is understandable. Who makes us, Google, do this to get a head ache (Italian-style) when I am offering 10 million dollars??
All this seems crazy to me: is it possible that this can be happening in 2007?
I would also like to reflect on another problem that is closely connected to the individual initiative and to the related infrastructure. Why is individual enterprise discouraged? I live in Silicon Valley, in California, and all around me I see twenty year olds who are starting one company after another and they are creating jobs, creating innovation, continually. Here there’s even a really great word for identifying these burgeoning companies: "startup".
Apple, HP, Google, Flickr, and Facebook, all started like that. To start up a company in California you need to fill in a form, pay a few dollars, and in half an hour you are away. In Italy I’m not saying it should be like that, but EVEN MORE SIMPLE, because there are no jobs: so then we need to create new ones, and who better than the young people have the will to create them?
So let’s facilitate, let’s invent, let’s make it possible to create startup and venture capital. What’s the point in complaining that there’s no work when we are complicating individual initiative? Directly hindering participation in a foreign competition? Listen to me: to resolve the problem of jobs, put the young people in a position to create them.
It would be great if you would talk about these basic issues (of infrastructure?) on your blog.
Compliments for your work and your honesty, that I appreciate.
It’s because of this that I am writing to you.
Ettore Pasquini"

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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27 October 2007

The former Messina Bridge

The affairs relating to the Stretto Messina company, with all the polemics that have come out, even on this blog, deserve more explanation.
First of all it seems appropriate to start off with what we have done. With what we have already done, before all this case came about, because this demonstrates that with the amendment for the dissolution of the company, there was a wish to arrive at a result that in reality we have already achieved. Basically, there was a wish to simply “renounce on commitments”.
Last year we already decided that the Bridge is not to be constructed and the money already set aside for that is being used to start creating more urgent projects in Sicily and Calabria.
In Calabria the money set aside for the bridge is being used to make more efficient the system where the boats come alongside at Villa San Giovanni, the work on the stretch Sibari-Roseto on the Jonica (State Road number106), the planning of the stretch Cotono-Cariati of the same road and the planning of the Reggio Calabria ring road. In Sicily we are financing the metro systems of Palermo, Catania and Messina as well as the completion of the Agrigento-Caltanisetta road.
There wasn’t anything more to be decided for the non-construction of the Bridge and there still isn’t, given that everything has already been decided.
Then it will be asked why the Stretto Messina company is still existing. I have no intention to keep it in existence. It’s even true that I have proposed an amendment that would see it merge with Anas. This is an amendment that I will put forward again when the framework law goes to be examined by the Chamber of Deputies. In the Senate, this was not accepted, because they don’t want Anas to have to deal with movement in the Straits, but they want a phantom agency, the umpteenth useless entity, good for cultivating clients and for wasting resources.
In any case, it’s a good opportunity to say that I have organised an immediate total thinning out of the Stretto Messina company. The number of employees will go from 100 to no more than 5 people. The Board of Directors will be replaced by a single administrator who will get no payment.
These are the facts. As you can see, it’s not a matter of keeping an unwieldy structure, the resources available are being used efficiently, the value generated by the company over these few years is being safeguarded and there’s no need to pay hundreds of millions of Euro in penalties. We would have had to do that if we had given in to the “ideological uproar” of certain parliamentarians of the Far Left. All that has achieved the aim of not constructing the Bridge.
PS. I’m attaching the letter that I wrote to the Head of the Stretto di Messina s.p.a. company, the engineer. Pietro CIUCCI.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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25 October 2007

The Bridge over the Straits of Messina

The money set aside to build the bridge over the Straits of Messina will be used to construct metro lines and infrastructure in Sicily.
Anyone who states that I have to come to terms with the fact that Sicily and Italy don’t need a bridge over the Straits of Messina, giving the idea that I want this to be constructed, either aren’t familiar with the documents, and that is serious, or they are in bad faith, and that is even more serious, especially if certain positions are coming from the President of the Legambiente {Environmental Group}

To those who want the facts, I remind them that we have de-financed the bridge project, so as to finance that railway and metro work in Sicily and we are the first to know the need for that. About a billion euro was set aside for the Region to be used on the Bridge and this money has now got a final destination, with a written agreement a few weeks ago for the metro in Palermo, Catania and Messina and the connection between Agrigento and Caltanissetta.

All this has nothing to do with the ideological uproar to get rid of what we have today, a company that on its own represents a value of 150 million Euro.
The roughly 500 million Euro that we would have wasted by closing the company and paying the penalties laid down, can be put to better use by doing this construction work that everyone says they want to do and that we are working towards doing.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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17 October 2007

A slightly more beautiful and civilised Italy

On 4 October I was the only Minister to meet with Sig. Giuseppe Invernizzi, a member of the delegation and Director of Apa di Como e Lecco. At that time Sig. Invernizzi told me about the issue of the sale to the public of unprocessed milk direct from the producers. (article ; video)
A tiny point used as an excuse concerning the measurement of the amount supplied that would have brought about the closure of the direct selling by many milk producers.
I’m publishing Sig. Invernizzi’s letter. He and all the others in the sector that he is representing have my best wishes for the development of this initiative.

Dear Ministro Di Pietro,

At last, now that the Framework Law has been approved by the Council of Ministers at their meeting on 12 October, the automatic distributors of liquid milk have been excluded from the regulations relating to metric measurements.
Common sense and reasonableness have won out against an absurd bureaucratic stumbling block. Today our country of Italy is slightly more beautiful and civilised and the consumers are nearer to the producers. Small volumes of liquid milk will be sold directly to the consumer with an indication of a minimum “guaranteed quantity”. The farmer can give even more milk in abundance, without having to pay the penalty designed for machines that have metric measures. This is exactly the same as happens in Switzerland and in Austria.
I’m writing this letter so that I personally can offer you my thanks and so that I can thank you in the name of the Consorzio Tutela Latte Crudo {Unprocessed Milk Protection Consortium} as well as on behalf of all our consumers who in tens of thousands, with great enthusiasm, have signed the petition to Minister Bersani
To demonstrate the gratitude of the farmers in relation to all those who have contributed to this great result, the Consorzio Tutela Latte Crudo is announcing that on 11 November, the feast of St Martin, there’ll be a “Great National Festival of Fresh Milk” which will be celebrated at all the milk distribution points, on the farms and in the streets and squares.
Furthermore, just as St Martin cut his cloak in 2 to share the cold with the one who was worse off than him, we will cut the price of milk by half: on that day of the festival, the consumers will be able to buy 2 litres of milk for just one Euro.

Thanking you once more. Best wishes.”
Giuseppe Invernizzi
Secretary of the Consorzio Tutela Latte Crudo

On Friday 12 October the government approved the outline for the framework law that alters the regulations about measuring instruments so as to liberalise the commercialization of the automatic distributors for the sale of milk direct to the consumers.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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12 October 2007

The costs of Politics

At Vasto I dealt with the costs of politics. I’m publishing the presentation here.

"The costs of politics have been at the centre of discussions in the last few weeks. It’s an important topic, but it’s basically marginal and irrelevant.
The real topic of debate must be not the costs but the quality of politics, the results of politics and the capacity to interpret the needs of the citizens and to apply the programme that has been presented at the elections.
If these points are not achieved, politics can cost even one euro but it’s useless. In the country there is an obvious impatience in relation to the inability of the politicians to get concrete results and their tendency to close up like a hedgehog when faced with new social phenomena.
The citizen’s perception is that the politicians are in a closed circle of an elite to which anything is allowed, quite separate from the life of society, and not to be judged by the magistracy.
It has been written that on coming out of Montecitorio, the deputies prefer not to be recognised and hope to be considered lawyers or officials of the House so as to avoid insults.

What’s the next stage? I have signed Grillo’s proposal for the popular law so as not to have any more convicted parliamentarians, not to have people elected to Parliament for more than two terms of office and the direct preference by the electors. I am the only party leader and the only Minister to have signed.
In the days that followed, Grillo and a million and a half people went out into the streets and squares to give a civil expression to their discontent. They have been criminalized by the parties and by the media of the parties including the RAI and Mediaset. For a month there’s been a lot of nonsense talked about anti-politics, but the real anti-politics is being done by Parliament.
In order to survive, the system needs profound reforms. The costs of the parliamentarians are crumbs in relation to the thousands of useless organisations, the Provinces, the mountain communities, the more than 8,000 towns, the collusion between criminality and local politicians through the use of kick-backs, the roughly four million employees of the State. The public debt is continually increasing, the interest that we pay on the debt every year stops us from having social policies, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, social security and research.
Sooner or later we need to realize this so that we don’t end up in the abyss. There has to be a drastic reduction in spending at the same time as renewed efficiency of the State."

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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26 November 2006

The “interest” belonging to the Italians

Palenzona, President of the Associazione italiana società concessionaria autostrade e trafori (Aiscat) {Italian Association of motorway and tunnel companies}, explains in a language that is probably his own that:

“Di Pietro tells lies” and that “It’s not true that Autostrade has not made 2,500,000,000 Euro of investments but it is the system that has not permitted the investments to be made.” A contradictory analysis that in effect admits that the investments have not been made. Meanwhile, the motorway tariffs have gone up and generous dividends have been distributed to the shareholders.
I have asked for the investments not made to be made available to the Ministry. I have asked for the interest that these sums have gathered, interest that must not be engulfed by the concessionary companies, to be destined to the infrastructure work as it is interest related to capital that is the property of the State.
This position has been rejected by the concessionary companies.
They have taken their case against the interest that has accrued to Lazio’s TAR {Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale =Regional Administrative Tribunal} Just yesterday, the TAR rejected their suspending request because of the lack of the basic prerequisites.
In fact the TAR has decided that the investments not carried out must be managed separately in the Balance Sheet.
I would never be so rash to say that Palenzona tells lies. Perhaps his outburst, as well as being an interested opinion, was just a hasty one.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Competitiveness of the economic system
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