Since 2009, the annual report and reports of the Antitrust Authority should represent the basis for the preparation, by the Government, of the annual draft law for the market and competition (art. 47, law July 23, 2009, n. 99 ). Annual law which should pursue the objective "to remove regulatory obstacles, of a normative or administrative nature, to the opening of markets, to promote the development of competition and to guarantee consumer protection". An annual law which has not been an annual one: since 2009 there has not been one (except for the decree law 1/2012 of the Monti government which, however, included various types of provisions and whose implementation is not completely completed) until 3 April of the 2015 when the one that is being examined by the Senate (since last November) was presented to the Chamber. The annual competition law has time for approval for now. And the economic chronicles inform that "it has lost pieces".
In truth, that article 47 (the number evokes the title of a well-known film by Totò which could be adapted for the occasion by having it preceded by the word "competition") which established the law on competition, seems to have been written by some Martian. Parliament, as it should be, is the place of representation of interests; but the parties, increasingly liquid, manage very little to mediate them, to filter them, to exercise the role of gatekeepers of public policies. Thus the famous corporations, passing through some parliamentarians, have direct access to the chamber and transversal alliances are created there: I vote the amendment against this liberalization if you vote the amendment against this liberalization. Thus the corporations manage to escape the blows inflicted on them.
That article 47, on the other hand, seems to have been written by someone who had in mind a Parliament of elected officials who think of the common good: a distinction is made between rules of immediate (sic) application, enabling laws, authorization for the issuance of ministerial decrees (because then Parliament should authorize ministerial decrees?). And there should also be the state of implementation of the interventions envisaged in the previous laws for the market and competition, indicating the resulting effects for citizens, businesses and the public administration. One cannot fail to reserve a bitter smile for this utopian legislator of 2009.
Those who, like Confindustria, nurtured the hope that the various constituencies "engraved" from time to time would have "the perception of a clear direction taken by the Legislator and would not have perceived the sacrifice imposed on their respective rights or privileges as a unilateral and unmotivated intervention ”, he was very wrong. Exactly the opposite has happened: the law on competition, like a caravan in partibus infidelium, is being attacked simultaneously by various parliamentarians who seem to see consensus more than the invisible hand of the market. The government has not always supervised properly and the letter from the Pd reformists last January which indicated the competition between the priorities must not be among the cards that the government keeps in evidence.
At this point a reflection should be made on the validity of the instrument that that utopian (to think about it) legislator of 2009 gave birth to. It is evident that a law a year on competition, with such broad intentions, the Parliament is unable to approve. Few rules would be needed, which should avoid expanding the law's scope for intervention (for example, it remains mysterious to me why it should be Parliament that decides on how the transition from protected customers to the free market for the sale of electricity should be managed or how the prices of insurance policies should be determined); rather some delegation would be desirable. And those few rules should be approved by a fixed date, on which the government should ask for trust (even if one should not have the illusion that that date is always respected). These are not times for sheets but at least one handkerchief could be tried to take home.
