Opposition chief Silvio Berlusconi crossed swords with the new government on Thursday over a decree designed to crack down on tax dodgers and abolish restrictive practices in a number of protected professions.
"Rather than opening the way to liberalisation, this decree opens the way to fiscal and bureaucratic oppression," said the former premier, who lost power to centre-left chief Romano Prodi in Italy's April election. The 69-year-old billionaire media magnate subsequently walked out of an assembly of the powerful industrial employers' federation Confindustria just as the author of the decree, Economic Development Minister Pierluigi Bersani, was about to give a speech.
Bersani responded to Berlusconi's attack, stressing that "the decree measures are all aimed at fighting tax evasion and simplifying (red tape). "If Berlusconi believes that these anti-evasion measures are equivalent to oppression, then I can only deduce that we use different dictionaries".
University and Research Minister Fabio Mussio went further, saying: "For someone who has spent his life avoiding and dodging taxes, being made to pay them is regarded as a dictatorship". Confindustria leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, meanwhile, praised the decree as a "good start".
"This country mustn't give the impression that it cannot change. It must become a more modern country which accepts competition a full 360 degrees," he said. The government unveiled the decree in a surprise move last Friday, linking it to a seven-billion-euro emergency supplementary budget aimed at straightening Italy's public accounts.
The manoeuvre included several measures for curbing tax evasion, such as a norm requiring retailers to inform the tax
authorities of their daily takings and another forbidding the use of cash in the payment of fees for lawyers, notaries, doctors, architects and accountants.
Other measures would open up certain professions to greater competition, affecting lawyers, notaries, pharmacists, taxi drivers, bakers and car insurance firms among others. The reforms have triggered uproar among the professions concerned, with wildcat strikes by taxi drivers and announcements of a 12-day strike by lawyers and a one-day strike by pharmacists.
Taxi drivers are up in arms over plans to deregulate the taxi licencing system in order to increase the number of taxis in circulation. Lawyers, meanwhile, are furious over plans to abolish their minimum fee regime, which would expose them to greater competition and also allow no-win, no-fee practices to be introduced into Italy.
Pharmacists are fighting plans to allow supermarkets to sell non-prescription drugs.
Under the current system, drugs can only be purchased in chemists. But that means that Italians are often left searching around for the few pharmacies that are open during lunch-times, on Sundays and on holidays for things as simple as an aspirin. The decree also abolishes a norm dating back to 1956 which restricts the amount of bread that can be baked in any given administrative district.
It also removes the costly need for notary approval in the sale of second-hand cars, motorbikes and boats. Banks have slammed the decree as well, since it will prevent them from charging clients who close their accounts. The government has stood by the decree, saying it will bring down prices and abolish anachronistic privileged market positions.
Premier Prodi said on Monday that the decree was in the "general interest" and would allow Italy to "lose 10 kilos of fat and gain 5 kilos of muscle". He added that the high price of bank and car insurance services were "out of order".
Bersani, meanwhile, said the decree was "just a start" and that other protected sectors would soon come under examination. Consumer groups applauded the decree, saying it would save Italian families up to 1,000 euros a year.
They urged the government to "stick to its guns", stressing that citizens would also benefit from the reduction in red tape.
