Currently Italy is experiencing several radical
institutional changes that are causing traumatic transformations in the life of
its citizens. As a result of an ongoing debate, an institutional reform to
decentralise the organisation of the State was implemented. This is a dangerous
mechanism that occurs in a general framework where impulses towards
privatisation are multiplying. The government is using it instrumentally in
order to reduce the State’s role as guarantor of individual rights.
Thisreform, which was hastily approved by Parliament
and lacks an appropriateinstitutional structure, has resulted in an
unprecedented shift of jurisdictionover the delivery of important services,
such as health and education.Specifically, certain responsibilities were transferred
to the regions withoutenough transfer of resources with which to deliver
essential services.There was no decentralisation of taxation,and with the last
budget law for 2003 Berlusconi has cut the transfers to localauthorities.
Moreover, there were no instruments envisaged to create a balancebetween poorer
and richer regions (per capita GDP in Lombardy is more thandouble that of
Calabria).
TheEuropean Union in its latest Councils meetings of
Prime Ministers is stillsuggesting to all members that public services should
be privatised. At the sametime, Italy’s internal stability pact (signed by the
regions and the centralgovernment), which proposes the obligations agreed upon
between national statesand the European Union at a national level, imposes fiscal
restraints on thecountry’s twenty regions and forces them to cut local welfare.
This is thecontext in which the change of government (Berlusconi’s takeover)
took place,as well as the neo-liberal choice of the new cabinet inviting the
localauthorities to privatisemunicipalised companies (transports, waterworks,
etc.). Article 35 of the budgetlaw for 2002 asked local authorities to
privatise public services such astransport or water distribution, echoing the
decisions of the European Union.All in all, the outcome produced by federalism,
the European Union and thegovernment threatens to become a potpourri where
services are privatised,consumer prices grow and the differences between
regions increase.[1]The enormous gap already existing in terms of the quality
of services andstructure of the labour market is in danger of widening if the
decentralisationreform of the State fails to include instruments with which to
balance resourcesat a central level.
U-turnon rights
Italyis the European country with the fewest
instruments of income protection(unemployment benefits). Flexible employment
results in very few part-timecontracts, which are prevalent in Europe. On the
other hand, temporaryemployment in Italy is very widespread – Italian companies
choose to lower thecost of labour and to have low levels of social protection
in order to becompetitive in international markets. The number of persons who
are defined asself-employed by Eurostat is almost double the European average
and equals 26.2%of the total work force (only Portugal and Greece have higher
percentages). Sucha high percentage of self-employed citizens certainly does
not refer toprofessionals, but rather to those who have collaboration
contracts,[2]although the tasks they carry out are typical of full employment.
According toISTAT, the National Institute of Statistics, 20% of the labour
force, workin these conditions and this is the segment of labour where poverty
ismore frequent.
Accordingto ISTAT, in 2001 12% of the population lived
in relative poverty (7.83 millionpersons; 2.63 million families), 66% in the
South, while those who lived inabsolute poverty were 3.28 million, 4.2% of the
population, 75% in the South.Between 2000 and 2001 countrywide poverty
decreased 0.3%, but it increased inthe South where long-term, female and youth
unemployment rates, and the spreadof irregular labour still reach very high
levels.
The impact of monetisation ofwelfare
Italy’spoor ranking in gender empowerment is due in
part to the trend towards themonetisation of the welfare system. Many regions
tend to substitute theassignment of money (detaxation, vouchers, allowances)
for assistance and caresystems (of the elderly, children, handicapped). In
practice, however, poorfamilies tend to prefer using these assignments as general
income supportconsequently increasing the burden of women, who must now also
perform the jobsof care and assistance. These additional household
responsibilities make theparticipation of women in the labour market more
difficult, or subsidiary tomen’s (part-time, alternation between outside
employment and domestic care,etc.).
Inaddition, monetisation of welfare can be socially
regressive. In certain cases,as with school vouchers that are intended to grant
a right to education,traditional welfare instruments have been transformed into
a veritableinstrument of redistribution towards the upper classes: in some
regions 90% ofthe school vouchers have been bestowed on private school
students, children ofthe upper class, who comprise no more than 5-7% of the student
population.
Plummeting public expenditure
Insuch a difficult social framework, political debate
on welfare is constantlytied to the debate on resources: proponents of
privatisation maintain that
Italy’spublic sector is too expensive. However, is a private system
really cheaper?And, is it true that Italians spend too much on rights?
Ifwe compare Italian public expenditure with that of
other European countries,Italy tends to be below average.[3]Its relatively low
level of public expenditure is largely the result of lowerspending on welfare
assistance and,to a certain extent, health care. In 1999 Italy spent 5.8% of
its GDP on healthcare, against France’s 8.1%, Germany’s 8%, Great Britain’s
6.4% and an EUaverage of 7.1%. In 1998 the United States, whose system is
almost totallyprivate, spent 5.7% of GDP on public health care. Besides, we
should take intoconsideration that per capita GDP figures for all these
countries are higherthan Italy’s. Therefore, in absolute terms, per capita
expenditure is alsohigher: according to the UNDP, Italy is third from the
bottom in per capitaexpenditure among the twenty largest economies and spends,
on the whole (privateplus public expenditure), 61% less than the United States,
while deliveringhealth care that is nevertheless judged much superior.
Ifwe go on to analyse the health care system, one of
the notable successes ofItalian welfare (the second highest quality in the
world according to WHOclassification), we may observe that, within the regional
management of healthcare, the regions spending more are those that redirect
resources towards aprivate health system. While the public system is bound to
efficiency criteriarather than profit, the private system tends to hospitalise
people who have noneed of it, to prolong hospitalisation, and to prescribe more
expensivetreatments in order to receive higher refunds from the regions’
coffers. Thedeficit of Lombardy, leader in the privatisation process, and the
country’srichest region, grew tenfold in five years, and it grew more thanthe
average of other regions in the public health sector.
Immigrants:between xenophobia and exploitation
Thenew laws passed by the government amount to a form
of semi-slavery forforeigners who come to work in Italy. These laws seriously
undermineimmigrants’ social conditions and rights, because they directly link
thepermit to enter the country to the existence of a contract, which gives
theemployer great power. If the contract is broken, the immigrant, no matter
howlong he/she has been living in the country, has to leave.Foreigners are
employed by families to take care of children and theelderly, particularly in
big cities. This is often irregular and badly paidlabour, with few rights and a
subservient relationship to the employer. Many ofthese people live with the
family that employs them and depend on that familyfor a home. This is one of
the factors leading to the placement of this labourforce in vulnerable segments
of the labour market, while at the same time thereis a lack of corresponding
public services (where foreign citizens could beactually employed with the same
rights as other workers).[4]
Thesituation of asylum-seekers is even worse, as
procedures have become moreselective and available financial resources to
process asylum requests constantly diminish. Asylum is notregulated by a law
although it is guaranteed by the fact that Italy has signedthe Geneva Treaty.
Anindividualist philosophy
Attentiontowards individual rights, the well being of
the community, and the valorisationof a common heritage, apparently do not seem
to be a prevailing trait of theBerlusconi administration. Many ofits proposed
or already approved regulations relieve public institutions oftheir social
responsibilities and leave the individual halfway between themarket and
charity, to the exclusive advantage of big companies, especiallylarge ones that
can avoid competition, or to those colluding with politicalpower.
Itis certainly not due to chance that one of the
Berlusconi administration’sfirst acts was to render non-punishable the crime of
fraudulent accountingpractices. In other words, accounting fraud committed by a
companyadministration was decriminalised. This measure, along with many others
taken inthe realm of judicial administration, besides partially undermining
theadministration of justice itself, is a clear result of Prime Minister
andForeign Secretary Berlusconi’s judiciary problems[5]as well as those of some
of his party’s Parliament members.[6]
Itis noteworthy that no measures are being taken to
improve the quality of justiceitself (e.g., legal processes take an extremely
long time). Rather, they are allintended to protect the president’s allies. As
a matter of fact,Berlusconi’s lawyers’ strategy for his trials is centred on
deferring thehearing until the offence for which the Prime Minister is judged
becomes barredby limitation resulting from new legislation that he proposed,
rather thandemonstrating that no offence has been committed in the first place.
In thiscase the government’s strategy goes beyond an individualist philosophy
andgoes so far as to transform the ruling classes’ private interests
intonational legislation.
Fromdevelopment aid to voluntary corporate charity
Fromthis class perspective the suggestion of
de-taxation made by the Italiangovernment at the 2002 World Summit in
Johannesburg is also emblematic:companies are granted tax relief and thus
invited to dispense charity, replacingthe states’ contribution to development.
The present government may transformthe whole structure of development aid
(ODA), depending on the will ofcorporations to spend on ODA to get tax benefits
from the government. Worst yetis Berlusconi’s and José María Aznar’sproposal to
tie development aid (in ItalianAPS - Aiuto per lo Sviluppo) to the repression
of underground emigration(‘We will help you if you keep your citizens from
emigrating’). Fortunately,the proposal did not pass at the European level. On
the issue of development,the government’s search for good publicity and the growing
absence of thestate go hand in hand, giving a clear picture of the government’s
tendency toengage in media-oriented political action. Tellingly, on different
occasions thePrime Minister/Foreign Secretary has forcibly stated it was “a
shame” thatItaly should be the country with the lowest expenditure in Europe
(and OECD) fordevelopment aid, but the allocated sum in the 2002 finance bill
remained ameagre 0.13% of GDP. In the meantime, there is no sign of a new law
ondevelopment aid. Spectacular announcements without substance of
financialcommitments multiply (such as the proposal of a Marshall plan for
Palestine),while trifling measures are heralded as grand interventions (the
anti AIDS fundat the Genoa G8).
In2002, at the International Conference on Financing
forDevelopment, in Monterrey, Mexico, the Italian government agreed to
thecommitment of increasing ODA to 0.39% of GDP within 2006. We shall see.
Thedanger is that in order to declare the growth of ODA it will use the
bookkeepingtrick of adding up the money destined to reduce poorer countries’
debt to thesum allocated at present.
Italy National Report
Alessandro
Messina; Martino Mazzonis
Sbilanciamoci; Lunaria
Notes:
[1] It goes without saying that no serious debate has
taken place in the country on the reform of the State in a federal direction or
on privatisation. The government continues
with covert reforms with a strong impact, local bodies differentiate
their welfare models and public resources are redirected in favour of the
richer classes, with a manoeuvre of reverse redistribution.
[2] Contingent workers, subcontractors that go to the
office every day, have a working schedule and a boss, but are treated as self
employed in juridical terms: no vacations, no medical insurance, no pension
scheme, etc.
[3] In the EU expense for social protection reached
27.6% of GDP in 1999. In that period Italy spent 25.3% of its GDP for social
protection and only came above Spain, Luxembourg and Portugal among EU
countries. Between 1990 and 1999 the percentage of Italian expenditure of its
GDP grew 0.6%, compared to the EU’s
growth of 2.1%, France’s 2.4%, Germany’s 4.2% (but it underwent reunification),
Great Britain’s 3.9%.
[4] Paradoxically, the political and social sectors
that most oppose immigration (especially Alleanza Nazionale and the Lega Nord,
members of the government coalition)
contribute to the increase of the entry of foreign persons in a poorly
protected and unstable labour market through their promotion of private and
family-oriented welfare. This is because the best solution for a family that is
left with complete responsibility for an elderly person is often to employ a foreigner
irregularly.
[5] The Prime Minister, Paolo Berlusconi, MP Cesare
Previti and others have been prosecuted for corruption and for many fiscal
crimes, and they are changing both laws and the judiciary system in order both
to avoid punishment or to postpone the trial until the terms for being judged
are expired.
[6] The latest proposal (which is being discussed
while this report is being written) introduces the possibility for the
defendant to advance a “legitimate suspect” claim (where the person being
judged asks to move the process from one Court to another because he has a
legitimate suspicion that the court is not fair towards him, and that he is
being persecuted) on the impartiality of the court that has been summoned to
judge him. Although this legal recourse already exists, within certain limits,
these limits are eliminated by this proposal.