A tough intervention was expected, and so it was. Day number 5 of the States General, the event wanted by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to meet all the stakeholders and outline the guidelines for the economic restart after the health emergency, was the one with the speech of the new president of Confindustria, the "falcon ” Carlo Bonomi, industrialist from Crema and former number one of Assolombarda. “Italian economic measures have proved to be more problematic than European ones”, Bonomi said, harshly attacking the choices and above all the government's delays towards businesses and workers. “The redundancy fund has been anticipated to a large extent by the companies and will continue to do so for another 4 weeks. Serious delays also for the procedures announced in support of liquidity ”, the head of industrialists then tweeted immediately after the face to face with Conte.
“The commitment against a new painful recession – continued Bonomi at Villa Pamphili – can only be successful if we don't hide the faults and mistakes made by everyone in the last 25 years. Now we honor the contracts and debts of the State towards companies“. Among the concrete proposals, one in particular emerged from Bonomi's tweets, which refers to theprovincial surcharge on electricity, repealed in 2012, and with respect to which a recent sentence of the Court of Cassation has established that the companies that have paid it have the right to a refund of the sums. At stake is therefore what was paid before the ten-year statute of limitations expired, i.e. the amounts paid in 2010 and 2011. euros of energy excise duties, improperly paid by companies and withheld by the State despite the sentence of the Court of Cassation which requires its restitution".
The premier then replied, trying to soften the tone: “Someone believes that this government has a prejudice against free economic initiative. I want to make it very clear: the measures that we have drawn up and included in our measures are dedicated to supporting businesses. On the part of this government there is constant attention to support for businesses,” Conte said. For us – he added – enterprise is a pillar of our society. No prejudice on the part of the government, we can have different opinions and assessments, that's OK, but there is no ideological prejudice here. Preserving the company and putting it in a position to be able to face a shock like this vigorously and resiliently is a priority for our country, otherwise we will go nowhere".
However, Conte also warned the industrial world about the recovery times, which will not be short: “The macroeconomic picture is very complex: we all understood that this emergency would bring with it high costs, as well as human, economic and social. Moreover, from a discussion that we keep up-to-date with the major national, European and international economic authorities, we agreed on the fact that the uncertainty that has arisen it will certainly not be dissolved within a few months".
