The menu of the Council of Ministers is greedy but for the Government it will be an obstacle course. Sblocca-Italia to reopen construction sites and restart public works, school reorganization and justice reform are the three hot topics that dominate the agenda of the first post-August Council of Ministers scheduled for Friday 29 August and on which today the government is back to work to prepare the texts of the measures. planned measures and the rest in the October Stability Law.
There is no doubt, however, that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi intends to speed up the reforms and above all implement interventions which, directly or indirectly, can help to move the deadlock of economic stagnation and start a minimum of investment and recovery. But let's see in detail the measures on the agenda.
UNLOCK ITALY AND LOCAL UTILITIES – It is a decree that will include simplifications to restart public works announced for too long but remained frozen for regulatory or financial reasons as well as tax incentives for the construction of new infrastructures and a mechanism to facilitate financing on the market. The decree is also awaited for its effects on the investee companies of local authorities, the so-called local utilities, some of which are large and efficient while others are too fragmented and inefficient due to the devastating presence of political clientelism. The Government aims to encourage aggregations and the dimensional growth of the subsidiaries, the number of which should drastically drop together with the inefficiencies that characterize them in too many cases. The Government also aims to promote their listing on the Stock Exchange on the basis of an exchange with local authorities such as: I'll extend the duration of the concessions if you open the capital of the investee companies to the market and start the privatisation. However, whether or not the decree will take off immediately will depend on the possibility of finding the necessary coverage in the coming days.
SCHOOL AND TEACHER EVALUATION – Matteo Renzi has repeatedly promised a reorganization of the school based on the meritocracy of teachers and students and on Friday the occasion is good to take the first steps. So far, very little is known about the decree being prepared by the Ministry of Education, but one of its pivots should be the national evaluation of teachers and the possibility of rewarding even financially those who work harder and those who work better, with the consequent farewell to short substitutes. Another crucial aspect – linked to the autonomy of schools – should be the strengthening of school-work alternation for students and the launch of an Erasmus program also for upper secondary school students and not just for universities. Finally, principals should have the first margins of flexibility in the choice of teachers. Here too it remains to be seen whether there will be only guidelines on which to open the consultation or whether the first measures have already been taken.
FASTER CIVIL JUSTICE – Justice reform is the third main course on the government's agenda for Friday's Council of Ministers. The starting point will be the speeding up of civil justice, the paralysis of which also has devastating effects on the economy and is one of the first causes that lead foreign operators not to invest in Italy. A decree should speed up civil justice and halve the backlog of cases with the strengthening of the courts for businesses and the debut of specialized sections for families and people's rights. Also arriving is the single role of honorary magistrates, interventions for the computerization of the courts and the disciplinary reform of the administrative and accounting judiciary. On the criminal side of the justice reform, however, a bill is envisaged to lengthen the statute of limitations for trials and stronger penalties for corporate crimes (basically the crime of false accounting and self-laundering will be reintroduced). Instead, both the rules on the reform of the CSM and those on the limits on the publication of interceptions will be postponed to September.
