The tensions over short-term rentals, the discontent over the interventions on dividends, and lastly also the controversy over the funds for the C metro in Rome. A week ago they were sitting together next to Giorgia Meloni and Giancarlo Giorgetti to present the maneuver at Palazzo Chigi, but the text does not have time to reach the Senate which is already an open clash between Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini. Throughout the day the two deputy prime ministers exchanged mutual attacks, which did not spare the Mef.
All this while the prime minister is busy in Brussels and certainly will not have appreciated this kind of “courtyard arguments”, as her parents define them. And also offering its side to the opposition which is ironic about a maneuver approved “without the knowledge” of the two majority leaders. Brothers of Italy, not surprisingly, remains essentially silent in these hot hours. The only one speaking is the Minister for Relations with Parliament Luca Ciriani, to try to put a brake on the allies. It’s fine for each party to try to “vindicate its own positions”, he observes, but “the budget approach is closed”. We may also review the “details, but the bulk” is done and must remain so. Furthermore, the budget available for parliamentary changes is there but it is not substantial compared to the 18.7 billion of the budget: there are 100 million euros – to also be shared with the opposition – which the parties will be able to try to allocate to their priorities through amendments. But nothing more. Already in the morning Tajani lists everything that is wrong. And he takes it first and foremost against “some grand commis at the Ministry of Finance who wants to punish and reinstate taxes”. But “politics decides”.
Also in the crosshairs appears to be Daria Perrotta, the state’s general accountant with whom several ministers have discussed in recent days to contain cuts to their ministries. The deputy prime minister reiterates that the intervention on short-term rentals must be canceled – the only point on which there is agreement with Salvini (even if Giorgetti had defended the rule in Parliament a few hours earlier) – and that the taxation on dividends must also be reviewed. “We didn’t know anything about this,” Tajani snaps: “I think we need to think about it, there isn’t a liberal enough vision.” The Italians’ irritation is also mounting for the banks’ IRAP, which “for Silvio was the robbery tax”, notes a big man. “The national banks are being hit but not the giants of the web”, observes another Forzista, recalling the recent speech by Marina Berlusconi, on the power of Big Tech “which rejects the rules”. And in the party there is also someone who denounces discontent over how the leader managed the negotiations. The League, in the meantime, does not welcomes Tajani’s attacks and at the same time a controversy breaks out over the appointments of the port authorities, with Salvini who, as Minister of Infrastructure, denounces the “annoyance” over the names “stranded in the Senate for months”. A “political choice” accuses Salvini “of one of the majority parties, not mine or the Prime Minister’s”. Salvini «take care of the cuts to metro C» increased in the afternoon leader of FI regarding the defunding of the capital’s infrastructure that emerged from the tables of the budget law. Another back and forth with the Northern League members who point out that it is not a cut but a “reprogramming” in subsequent years precisely so as not to lose resources. However, there would instead be a real cut to the M4 line in Milan for which the MIT already assures that repairs are being made, after “the Accounting Office unilaterally ordered provisional definancing, which ignores assessments of merit”. Meanwhile, the center-left goes on the attack and targets the majority divisions. “It seems that the two deputy prime ministers Tajani and Salvini voted in the Council of Ministers on a maneuver without their knowledge”, quips Elly Schlein. “It’s a government without ideas for the future”, is the opinion of five-star member Stefano Patuanelli. A future in which Giorgetti instead sees other positive judgments that may come from rating agencies because “even today we believe we are undervalued in terms of ratings compared to the reputation of other countries”. All eyes – therefore – on the next events: October 31st with Scope and November 21st with Moody’s.