The Regions, including those led by the centre-right, are complaining, for now in a whisper. Publishers and bookshops are complaining about the new school textbooks to be printed directly from the online version. Nurses, and even private healthcare, firefighters and soldiers complain about the disparities with the police force. The school sector is in turmoil, ready to strike, and the unions are greatly alarmed by the cuts in allowance revaluations. And if Forza Italia opens up some glimmer of light on pensions, the awareness remains, as Antonio Tajani himself admits, that 'everything cannot be done', that the international situation remains more complex than ever and the margins, negotiated with Europe, are already stretched to the maximum.
While the budget session has formally opened in the Chamber, criticism is already raining down from all sides on the fifth budget signed by Giorgia Meloni and Giancarlo Giorgetti. Now it will be the turn of the excerpts of the matters considered extraneous to the budget bill, which the commission led by Giuseppe Mangialavori (FI) should address as early as Wednesday, when the complete cycle of hearings and the deadline for amendments will be decided - which could be around 17-18 November.
It will then be the group leaders' conference at the end of the month that will establish the deadline for it to arrive in the Chamber, but the deputies are already betting on an ok close to Christmas (between 21 and 23 December). With all due respect to the senators who, in all likelihood, will have to return from the Christmas break for the final approval - and without room for further interventions - before New Year's Eve. A film already seen, now an end-of-year classic. Nonetheless, in the absence of meetings with the social partners before the launch, the parties are warming up their engines to try to influence the parliamentary passage. Forza Italia begins with the general secretary of the CISL, Daniela Fumarola, who Tajani meets at the party with the two group leaders, Stefania Craxi and Enrico Costa.
'We cannot overturn the manoeuvre', is the premise of the Italian deputy prime minister and leader, who then promises his interlocutors that FI - which reiterates the priority of introducing dedicated social security for the armed forces - 'will study all the possibilities' both with its own amendments and 'through an evaluation that will also be made within the majority', convinced that 'some results can be achieved on pensions'. Difficult, however, without finding alternative coverage to the new tightening of check revaluations which is triggered for pensions above 4 times the minimum.
A 'social robbery' maneuver, the bubble of Avs leader Angelo Bonelli, while colleagues from the Democratic Party, who point the finger at the progressive reduction of healthcare funds compared to GDP, have already started to meet the social partners. The first meetings were, explain dem sources, with Legacoop and Ance, but there will be others between now and when the work on the maneuver gets underway. New coverage, in any case, will not be easy to find. The fund cover for parliamentary changes is very short, 120 million in 2027 and the same in 2028. And everything that can be scraped has already been scraped, between rationalizations, cuts and postponements, such as those on public disaster interventions of civil aid: 1.2 billion reduction in allocations over the three-year period, which will indeed be restored, but from 2030.
The majority, for now, defends the budget law's structure, also against school protests: it is 'yet another lie from the left', says the Melonian Raffaele Speranzon, because 'due to the birth rate decline the school population suffers a decline of 1.5% per year' while the maneuver covers '99.5% of teacher turnover'. So there will even be 'an increase in professorships per student compared to the past'. But in the meantime the unions are asking for the cuts to be cancelled. Or it will be a strike.
