Dear fuel, new protest front from taxi drivers: demonstrations and assemblies

The protest comes to life today with a demonstration organized in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT), which will see the joint participation of historical acronyms such as Uritaxi, It Taxi, Unicoop and the NCC drivers of Unitrav.

Tomorrow the attention will move to Florence, where a maxi national assembly has been convened to take stock of the performance of the category. The unions' objective is to push the ministry to open a direct negotiation channel to mitigate the impact of energy price increases on workers' tariffs and family budgets.

The drivers' demands are clear and are based on the request for an increase in the tax credit, a measure defined by the representatives of Federtaxi Cisal as easily practicable but now reduced to a minimum in recent years. The associations report an increase in management costs of between 25% and 30% since the beginning of the crisis. In addition to the consolidation of the tax credit, on the table there are requests for the establishment of an extraordinary compensation fund and the extension of professional diesel, although the latter measure is partial given that the taxi fleet is now mainly made up of hybrid, electric or petrol vehicles.

Parallel to the white car protest, the MIT will host the first official meeting of the 'Permanent table of road transport of goods and logistics', a body established on 8 October to encourage dialogue between companies and clients. The summit will see the discussion between the trade associations, the minister Matteo Salvini and the deputy minister Edoardo Rixi. Having overcome the emergency phase thanks to the government allocation of 105 million euros approved last week, the parties will now seek convergence on the structural reforms of the sector, with the world of freight transport asking for medium-term certainties precisely on the stability of tax credits.

While transport demonstrates in Italian squares, the executive takes steps in Brussels to protect the primary sector. Italy has formally submitted to the European Commission the request to extend exceptional and temporary aid from the EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development) to cover losses linked to the surge in agricultural fuel costs. The Italian proposal, shared and supported by the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia, will be discussed and officially presented during the work of the Agrifish Council.