"If we want to continue to hurt ourselves for another ten days on the tax delegation by talking about the little hand, let it be known that that little hand is mine". With these words, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, speaking yesterday at the Pd assembly, tried to dampen the controversy over the Berlusconi-saving rule that appeared on December 24 in the legislative decree approved preliminary by the Government. This is article 19, which provides for non-punishment for those who have evaded up to 3% of the declared income.
“I consider it a regulation that has nothing to do with ad personam laws – added the Prime Minister -. What needs to be changed changes, in the interest of the Italians. We discussed and went into detail point by point, we went into the merits. This is the way a government governs, the idea that someone packs a package doesn't suit me. We do not make laws ad personam and we do not make them contra personam”.
In any case, the provision would have extinguished the four-year prison sentence for tax fraud (of which three were pardoned) imposed on the leader of Forza Italia in the context of the Mediaset TV rights trial. Furthermore, Berlusconi would have seen the ineligibility for 6 years canceled under the Severino law. Hence the controversy raised by the Pd minority over the "little hand" which materially inserted the rule into the text, despite the Executive having promised to amend the article, postponing the discussion of the entire decree to the Council of Ministers on February 20, i.e. after the election of the new President of the Republic.
“This January we need to fasten our seat belts – Renzi said again -. Not only for the reforms and the electoral law and not only for the Jobs Act or for the tax authorities”. As for the end of the Italian presidency of the European Union, according to the Premier “in these six months the vocabulary has changed. There has been an extraordinary job, but either we start complaining about the commas or we understand that there is a country that needs to get back on track. Either we do it or no one else will."
Returning to the Berlusconi-saving rule, Pippo Civati reiterated the critical line of the Pd minority: “This is so big that someone could suspect that perhaps it was intentional, an accident to destabilize. Renzi cannot trivialize by saying that the little hand is his and that the CDM discussed it when the ministers tell us that they knew nothing about it. It's a dangerous game and now we need a government audit. The law in question then, beyond Berlusconi, needs to be reviewed”.
Bersani is also critical: “In the regulation on taxation there is a rule of proportionality – said the former secretary -. Whoever has more has the right to escape more. However, the same criterion of proportionality is missing in the Jobs Act", in particular in disciplinary dismissals, where there is no balance between the fact subject to disciplinary action and the dismissal, "as if in football a player, for having missed a lineout, be expelled".
