What is ending will not be remembered as a trivial week. On Wednesday 29 January, two aftershocks finally enlivened the dead mill of the Italian affair: the agreement on electoral reform and the debut of the seventh automotive group in the world born from the marriage between Fiat and Chrysler. Two salutary shocks that have very specific names and surnames and which must be fully registered to two protagonists of our times such as Matteo Renzi and Sergio Marchionne.
For twenty years there had been talk, often nonsense, of electoral reforms and institutional reforms. The only birth, which can never be cursed enough, of the Second Republic was the notorious Porcellum and it took the intervention of the Constitutional Court to archive it by kicking the guilty inaction of the political class. Then Renzi took to the field and in a few days, sometimes with abrupt and perhaps annoying ways but with great determination, defied unpopularity and put on the table not one but two agreements with Silvio Berlusconi to quickly approve not only the Italicum , the new electoral law, but also the constitutional reforms concerning Title V and the competences of the State and the Regions and the overcoming of the perfect bicameralism with the transformation of the Senate. The challenge is difficult and the next few weeks will tell if the reforming momentum of the new secretary of the Democratic Party will be rewarded as it deserves, but the die has been cast and the goal of the new electoral law and institutional reforms is beginning to no longer seem just a vague chimera.
Faced with events of this magnitude, it is right that a broad debate should open up in Parliament and in the country and that everyone has their say, but it is a bit boring that it is not understood that on institutional issues the best is always the enemy of the good and that no one can think of imposing his point of view in the Enlightenment but that, on the contrary, having to reconcile different orientations on the rules of the game, compromise is the obligatory path of politics and the salt of democracy. The alternative is stark: if you really want to change you have to find a reasonable point of balance between the different theses in the field, otherwise there is only paralysis or the swamp or, if you want, the sports bar chatter, as demonstrated the painful drift of the 5 Star Movement which, whenever it finds itself in obvious difficulty due to its evident political incapacity, invents a convenient target as it is shamefully doing with the Head of State.
The other big shock of the week is the presentation of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. It may be regrettable that Lingotto has chosen Holland as its registered office and Great Britain as its tax office (which does not mean, as Camusso mistakenly thinks, not paying taxes in Italy, because "Fiat will continue to pay taxes where it produces and sells its products making profits and therefore also in Italy"), but the Italian establishment (political class, Confindustria and trade unions) should do some self-criticism because it is a bit difficult to demonstrate that our country knows better than Amsterdam and London attract foreign capital and ensure lower taxes and less cumbersome regulations. But last Wednesday in the economic pages of the newspapers and on specialized sites there was another piece of news to ponder and it was the announcement of the dismissal of 3.500 Peugeot employees who, unlike all the workers in the Italian Fiat plants, will not have plus a job. One can think all one wants of Marchionne's strategy but intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that the Fiat CEO had inherited a technically bankrupt company ten years ago and made it the seventh automotive group in the world with no more state aid and ensuring a future for Italian plants and workers. Could it have been done more and better? Certainly: in life you can always do more and better, but in the end it is deeds that count and not words. So hats off to the results achieved by Marchionne, in the hope that new men like Renzi will be able to fully accept the challenge launched by the CEO of Fiat Chrysler on the modernization of the country.
In recent days Enzo Di Giorgio, a worker who has worked at Fiat Mirafiori for 36 years, commented: “We are not stupid and we knew what was about to happen at Fiat, but it is no longer time for philosophical discourses. The important thing is to work for everyone and Fiom must also understand this by leaving it with her no”. You are right, Mr. Di Giorgio, his words are full of healthy worker pride. It will be hard for Italy to change and get back on top, but finally the healthy shocks of Matteo Renzi and Sergio Marchionne give us some hope for a better future.
