Mario Monti is a methodical type, with a rational passion, led to meticulously examine all aspects of the problem before making a decision. And this is an advantage because faced with the enormity of both internal and international problems, a more emotional person and less master of the technical aspects of the tangle of issues that have become knotted around the euro could easily lose his bearings. Instead, our Prime Minister moves confidently both in Brussels and in Rome.
The European tour mainly serves to reassure our partners that Italy will keep faith with the program announced to the Chambers aimed at securing public finances and at the same time laying the foundations for a relaunch of our economy, avoiding a disastrous recession not only for the country's social stability but also for the public finances themselves. On the other hand, Monti is well aware that the main German objection to coordinated financial interventions at Community level (through Eurobonds or financing from the State-saving Fund) lies in the fear that, without market pressure on their debts, the most undisciplined States would be led to loosen their policies of rigor and reforms, with the consequence that the citizens of virtuous countries would have to pay for the merry management by the countries more inclined to live beyond their means. But it is precisely your personal credibility and that of your government that should mitigate this fear and therefore also convince the Germans that, without a strong and credible Community guarantee on the debts of the various countries, the financial crisis would overwhelm any recovery action that individual states would take, ending up affecting the very solidity of Germany which would be affected by the virus through its banking system.
The Italian crisis and the European crisis are therefore closely connected. It is essential for Italy to vary as soon as possible an initial and robust package of measures in order to be able to reach the Ecofin summit and the subsequent meeting of heads of government in December, with what it takes to be able to move the German blockade at any measure aimed at managing the European sovereign debt crisis in a community manner. If the whole of Europe fails to take action quickly and credibly, it would not be possible to control the rise in interest rates witnessed by the high spreads and the liquidity crisis which is heavily affecting the banks of the peripheral countries of the Eurozone but which also begins to attack the central countries starting from France and Holland.
So it is necessary to quickly give a signal that Italy is now serious. Where to start? A document elaborated by various parliamentarians of all the parties that support the Government, from Linda Lanzillotta (Api) to Walter Vitali (Pd) to Mario Baldassarri (Fli) to Enrico La Loggia (Pdl) to which many others have been added including Tiziano Treu, Enrico Morando and Antonio D'Alì put forward some detailed proposals both to ensure the consolidation of public finances and to give an initial signal of support for the competitiveness of the economic system.
It is a question of launching a pension reform that extends the calculation according to the contributory method to all, leaving a certain freedom as to the retirement age because the calculation of the pension will no longer be based on the last salary but on the payments made during the working life and therefore, the sooner one retires, the lower his pension will be.
We then talk about the new taxation on real estate or rather, according to the authors of the document, an ordinary wealth tax which should in part, together with a possible increase in VAT, finance a tax relief on lower incomes and on businesses through a reduction of Irap. And here we can already see that the measures of rigor are combined with those intended to improve the competitiveness of the production system. We then move on to privatisations, which could be accelerated through the establishment of one or more funds into which the real estate and movable assets of the State and local authorities would flow, the shares of which would be placed on the market to private individuals. Finally, a detailed chapter concerns infrastructures and in particular the incentives to be offered to private individuals to entice them to invest in the sector.
It is clear that the cap of all the measures must be the measures aimed at cutting the costs of politics and not only the salaries and annuities of parliamentarians, but above all we must focus on the reduction of discretionary expenses, which have grown in these years of austerity by almost 60%, and on the deforestation of the thousands of public bodies and companies which, as demonstrated by the Enav-Finmeccanica scandal, are the real manger of the political system and its clientele.
The Italians, as demonstrated by the many messages collected by social networks, are willing to make some sacrifices, because they understood that bankruptcy would be disastrous and would cost everyone much more, but they want to see effective equity in the distribution of loads, and above all understand that today's renunciations can pave the way for an effective recovery of the economy.
As Monti wrote a few weeks ago, Italy cannot transform itself from a founding country into a sinking country of Europe. His actions are therefore today crucial in convincing the Germans to make the Community mechanisms of debt management and the easing of the liquidity crisis work. We have a great responsibility. We must honor her to the fullest.
