The opening hours of the shops and their opening on Sundays continue to cause discussion. But now the risk of going back is getting closer. Angelo Senaldi, Pd deputy and rapporteur in the Productive Activities Commission, is attempting to dismantle one of the market liberalization measures introduced by the Monti government: the total deregulation of the opening hours and days of commercial activities.
Senaldi presented a bill aimed at introducing at least 12 annual closing days for merchants. Marking a step back from the "liberalizing turn" that the national salvation executive introduced in 2012, not without arousing the obvious controversy of small traders. A bill in the Italian legal system certainly does not have a great chance of surviving the legislature. But in the meantime the vice president of Confcommercio, Lino Stoppani, exults and mockingly praises the regulation: "Liberalisations guarantee economic efficiency but create social unease: total deregulation does not work".
Confcommercio is one of the main bulwarks of small merchants, who will certainly have invested time and money to set up this lobbying activity aimed at fighting windmills: that large-scale distribution that never lowers its shutters, that large-scale distribution that small retailers would like to slow down close to the holidays, when by now most of the customers pour into the shopping centers "emptying" the traditional shop.
Of course, a de-liberalization of this type will have no repercussions on GDP. And the additional inefficiency that will weigh on the economic system will certainly be modest if the bill is converted into law.
But this is not the point. What burns is the reconfirmation of a country that does not want to mature, of a vast sector of our economy - that of small traders that the historian Paul Ginsborg lucidly analyzes - which perseveres in the most sinister conservatism after decades of permissiveness and tax evasion guaranteed without exception by the political class.
While it is not surprising that Forza Italia and the 5 Star Movement are in favor of reversing, it makes one think that - according to what Corsera reports - the Minister of Development himself, Federica Guidi, would support the return of mandatory closures.
What does Renzi think? Is the provision in line with the wave of reform he promised? The carbine is once again ready to wreak havoc on the free market which in this case, mind you, is not that of the subprimes. It is to be hoped that it does not hit the mark.
