Il decree on liberalization becomes law. After the trust approved the day before yesterday, the final vote was held in the Chamber yesterday afternoon for the conversion of the text: 365 deputies in favor, 61 against. A green light that arrived right on the wire, considering that the decree would expire tomorrow.
GIARDA: THERE IS COVERAGE ON LIBERALIZATIONS
Even if the process in Parliament has formally closed, the government still has some questions on liberalization to resolve, or simply to clarify. The first concerns those five articles which, according to the calculations of the General State Accounting Office, would not have financial coverage. After the controversies of recent days, the Minister for Relations with Parliament, Piero Giarda, dismissed the issue yesterday, assuring the Montecitorio Chamber that the government guarantees "financial neutrality" of those provisions.
MESS ON BANKS: TOWARDS A DECREE TO SAVE COMMISSIONS
Another very delicate point concerns the cancellation of bank commissions on credit lines. The measure was introduced in the Senate with an amendment to which the Government had given an opposing opinion. The intention to undo the effects of this intervention has been evident for some time now, but to do so the Executive must resolve a tangled problem regarding timing.
It was decided not to modify the amendment during the discussion in the Chamber because this would have required a third reading in the Senate, putting the entire decree at risk of expiry. The Government thus decided to proceed with a separate intervention, and at the beginning the most probable hypothesis seemed to be a new one amendment, this time to be included in the simplification decree (but also in this case the addition would require a third reading in Palazzo Madama). The option has not yet been discarded, but in doing so the time gap between the entry into force of the two decrees (liberalisations establish the norm, simplifications cancel it) risks creating many problems for the banks, in terms of lower revenues as well as any legal disputes.
To avoid all this, the Executive is considering the possibility of proceeding with a separate mini-decree, to be churned out already with today's CDM, so that the two measures, the anti-bank virus and the anti-bank saver, almost perfectly overlap. Meanwhile, yesterday the majority (all: Pd, Pdl and third pole) presented an agenda in which the Government is recommended to resolve the mess in the most painless way possible, that is, clarifying that the nullity of the contracts must be interpreted as a sanction for those who do not comply with the provisions of the Cicr (the Interministerial Committee for Credit and Savings).
PHARMACISTS: STRIKE ON MARCH 29, BUT THE GUARANTEE SAYS NO
While even the bankers obtain from the Government the hoped-for corrections to the liberalization decree, the pharmacists remain among the few who are still unhappy. The union Federfarma has proclaimed a strike for 29 March against the new law: “The Ministry of Health – explain the pharmacists – has issued an interpretative opinion on some aspects of article 11 of the liberalization decree, in view of the entry into force of the conversion law. This opinion contains various forcings and inconsistencies that distort the will of the Parliament and which will have a negative impact on the pharmaceutical service".
But the President of the Guarantee Authority on strikes, Roberto Alesse, made it known that “no strike proclamation has been received from Federfarma for next 29 March. Therefore, at present, it would be a question of an announcement effect, also in the light of the fact that, if proclaimed for that date, it would be in violation of the legal obligation of advance notice".
