Conflict of interest, the law awaited for twenty years and Meloni’s mild rules

Do you remember? The conflict of interest. The great shadow of Silvio Berlusconi, the eternal unfinished of the center-left governments, the young unfinished of the Five Star Movement. The law in force is from July 2004, signed by Franco Frattini, second Berlusconi government. Even then it was considered bland. “We will change it, the problem continues to be unsolved”, he promised as secretary of the DS Piero Fassino. Twenty years have passed. Frattini continues to regulate potential conflicts between government members, but a law is still missing for parliamentarians.

Now let’s talk about it again. Why Giuseppe Contedusting off an old priority of his Five Star Movement, a relic of the first battles against politics and a missed objective during the years of government, he presented a very severe bill to the Chamber to “keep the moral question high” and avoid “going back to seeing throwing coins at politicians”.

Result? The majority rewrote it from top to bottom, softened it a lot. Indeed, he delegated the government to rewrite it, with very loose ends. Production time: two years, starting from when – in two months, a year? – Parliament will approve the delegation. If all goes well – and pessimism is legitimate – a law could be seen before the next general elections.

Operation watering down: 2% to 50% shares

And therefore, it will be said, there is no need to linger in examining the text, the embryo of the law, the starting point of a very long journey. But the majority in the commission approved the bill, which will arrive in the Chamber for the first green light by the end of the month. And so to take the center-right seriously, when it says it wants not only to suppress Conte’s proposal, but to seize the opportunity to truly reform Frattini (“We want to use the time necessary to write a balanced, non-punitive law, free from prejudice ”, assures the FI deputy Paolo Emilio Russospeaker of the text), some details deserve mention, as a clue to what could be.

In fact, the majority delegates Giorgia Meloni and his government to regulate cases of conflict of interest for the prime minister, ministers, members of the government and independent authorities, but also for presidents and regional councilors. It does not include party leaders (the League asked for it), nor the spouses and relatives of government members (this is what the M5S wanted).

But it is above all a percentage that stands out, the measurement of the distance between the right’s proposal and that of Conte. The former prime minister in fact proposed the incompatibility of government positions with the ownership or availability of shareholdings exceeding 2% of a company holding concessions from the State or under a monopoly regime or with interests in particular fields, from publishing to defence. And he applied that incompatibility to the minister or undersecretary but also to the spouse and relatives up to the second degree. What does the right do? It establishes that incompatibility is triggered only for the holder of the office, only for shareholdings exceeding 50% and only for companies under concession from the State, or holders of exclusive rights or which operate under a monopoly regime. From 2% to 50%, two visions of the world.

The Renzi rule and the gap on parliamentarians

Conte also proposed to prohibit not only those in government positions but also parliamentarians from receiving funds from foreign states: the Renzi rule was renamed due to the relations of the senator of Italy alive with Saudi Arabia. And so he, Renzi, relaunched by targeting Conte’s father-in-law, entrepreneur and owner of a well-known hotel in the center of Rome: “We add a line to ask for transparency also for wives, partners, fathers-in-law and mother-in-law”. And so on, with proposals that will never see the light of day.

However, no one seems to want to address one gap: the conflicts of interest of deputies and senators. The other European countries impose various rules on their parliamentarians, from the prohibition of accepting gifts above a certain amount, up to incompatibility with certain shareholdings. Italy, nothing. An investigation by Repubblica at the beginning of the year counted one hundred potential conflicts. In the bills under discussion, not even a single line.