Pensions, sting of M5S and Lega on professionals and managers

Other than abolishing the Fornero reform or recalculating pensions with the contributory method. The recipe packaged by the bill presented to the Chamber by the group leaders of the Five Star Movement, Francesco D'Uva, and of the League, Riccardo Molinari, will give middle-class pensioners a much, much more severe blow than the Fornero reform envisaged.

Lega and Cinque Stelle are determined to cut pensions above 10 euros net per month (20 euros gross per year) from 4 to 80% with a modulated intervention in proportion to the earlier retirement with respect to an age defined a posteriori and which, by retroactively affecting acquired rights, is destined to create growing inequalities and discontent and to raise a shower of protests and appeals which, as judge Gian Carlo Caselli claims, will most likely end up before the Constitutional Court.

The objective of the maneuver is to find the resources to raise the minimum and social pensions but, as has already happened with the Di Maio Decree on work, the clumsy and demagogic way in which the intervention on middle class pensions has been thought risks turning into a boomerang. For two reasons. Firstly because, focusing on a relatively small number of pensioners (158 pensioners in all), it risks being very heavy and being disavowed by the Consulta as discriminatory and retroactive and secondly because the resources that the cut will ensure will hardly arrive to the 500 million a year which is the minimum necessary to raise the minimum and social pensions.

The populist Robin Hood-like logic with which Lega and Cinque Stelle are preparing to cut middle-class pensions, not only for the future but from 2019 January XNUMX onwards, also appears to be completely unrelated to a project for the overall reorganization of pensions but above all it risks creating a precedent which, by harming acquired rights without too much concern, can only alarm all pensioners and not just those in the categories that are targeted. What is certain is that, in addition to the medium-high pensions of public managers, the intervention of the League and the Five Stars will also affect the private social security funds of doctors, engineers, architects, accountants and other professional categories , such as journalists, industrial experts, psychologists and so on.

The most penalized will be those who retired from work before the age of 60 but, according to an initial survey, it will be mainly women, policemen and soldiers who will suffer if the Lega and M5S, overwhelmed by protests and protests from the middle class, they will not stop in time and will not understand that they have taken a very high-risk road that can have social and electoral repercussions that perhaps the Northern League and the grillini have not yet fully considered. Sooner or later someone will also ask Lega and Cinque Stelle why, instead of hitting the acquired rights of pensioners, they don't think of cutting the rich golden salaries of their parliamentarians.