Good morning everyone, thank you for being here.
The Council of Ministers meeting that has just come to a close dealt with a lot of things, approving many measures, all of which I must say are very important.
Let’s of course start with constitutional reform. Today’s Council of Ministers meeting approved another reform, following the others we have already approved this year. This is obviously the constitutional reform that introduces the direct election of the head of government, so the President of the Council of Ministers, essentially guaranteeing the two major objectives that, from the outset, we have made a commitment to Italians to achieve.
On the one hand, guaranteeing citizens’ right to decide who they are to be governed by, substantially bringing an end to a period of governments being overturned, a period of power games, a period of shifting government coalitions (‘trasformismo’), of ruling majorities made up of different political colours, and of technical governments, in short of all those governments that, over the years, have basically gone over citizens’ heads to do things that citizens had not decided on.

The second of these objectives is to ensure that whoever is chosen by the people can govern with the horizon of a full term of office, so basically ensuring government stability with five years to complete the government programme; from our point of view, guaranteeing this stability is a substantial condition for building a strategy and for having credibility at both national and international level. It is not up to me to remind you, Minister Casellati will be doing so when she arrives, that over the last 75 years of Italy’s history, we have had 68 governments, with an average life of approximately one and a half years.

I consider this to be the mother of all reforms that can be done in Italy. I consider it the mother of all reforms that can be done in Italy because, if we take a step back and look, for example, at what has happened in Italy and Europe over the last twenty years, taking for example the time between 2002 and 2022, in Italy we have had nine Presidents of the Council of Ministers with twelve different governments, in France there have been four Presidents of the Republic and Germany has had three Chancellors. Over the same period of time, France and Germany grew by more than 20%, while Italy grew by less than 4%.

We therefore have to ask ourselves a question, because either all Italian politicians are worse than French and German politicians, and frankly I do not think that is the case, or something in the system has not worked. The thing that has not worked in the system is precisely the issue of not having a full term of office, because when the legislature period is very limited, the tendency is to favour whatever gets immediate consensus rather than having a strategy; the tendency is to favour current spending rather than investments, and therefore also everything we have seen regarding the issue of public debt and the lack of an industrial strategy. This lack of stability has objectively also created a problem in terms of our credibility at international level, regarding the continuity of our projects and discussions. When the legislature period is very short, i.e., when governments go home on average after a year and a half, this produces structural weakness in our political system, which becomes weakness with respect to economic concentrations, weakness with respect to red tape, weakness with respect to vested interests.

This is why I believe this reform is fundamental and I want to say this also to those who have said over the last few hours, over the last few months, that “there’s no need”, “this is not a priority”, “this is a stable government and so constitutional reform is not a priority”. On the contrary, this is a priority and it is precisely because we are a stable and strong government that we have the responsibility to seize this opportunity, to ask ourselves what will happen afterwards, leaving this nation with something that can objectively solve a number of its structural problems. If we weren’t the political government that we are, we would not have the responsibility to put in place what Italians asked us to, but we are a political government and we intend to implement our programme.
The text of the reform we have prepared takes into consideration the comments and suggestions that we gathered during our discussions with both opposition parties and of course parties in the governing majority as well as with civil society (as you know, we held several meetings on this matter). Essentially, the objectives I have told you about were, and are, a must for us, and in drawing up this measure we addressed the problem of coming up with a decree that could be met with the most consensus possible: we do not want to impose a reform, we want to try and introduce a reform with the backing of certainly the majority of Italians and ideally the majority of political parties. So, we have taken a number of elements that kept coming up in our discussions, ensuring they are included in the measure.    

The first of these elements that came up across the board is the role of the President of the Republic.
Everyone, including the vast majority of citizens, considers the role of the President of the Republic to be one of providing an absolute guarantee, so like a ‘totem’. We have decided not to touch the President of the Republic’s powers and responsibilities, with of course the only exception being the appointment of the President of the Council of Ministers as, in this case, he/she will be elected directly by citizens.
A lot of attention has also been paid to not altering the role of Parliament, which acts as a counterbalance particularly to a directly elected President of the Council of Ministers. This is something else we have dedicated ourselves to.
This measure basically modifies four articles of the Constitution. I’ll be passing the floor to Minister Casellati later, who can better illustrate the details with her knowledge of also the constitutional aspects of this matter.
The President of the Council of Ministers will be elected by universal suffrage, of course directly; the election to the houses of parliament will be carried out at the same time, with a single ballot; the responsibility of ensuring the elected President of the Council of Ministers has a majority will be taken care of in the definition of the electoral law. An ‘anti-overturn’ rule is provided for, meaning that in the event of resignation, impediment or no-confidence vote, the elected President can only be replaced, in a single case, by a Member of Parliament belonging to the ruling majority (so bringing an end to technical governments and governments being overturned) and only to implement the government programme as it was presented to Parliament by the elected President of the Council of Ministers. There will therefore no longer be the possibility to form governing majorities with different political colours in order to implement programmes that no one has voted for; there is instead a provision regarding a rule to guarantee stability and continuity for the governing majority to carry out its programme. In our view, this element further strengthens the stability of the legislature. However, this can only happen once. Should there be other problems or if the elected Member of Parliament does not win the confidence vote in Parliament, then we go back to the polls.

The position of ‘Senator for Life’ will be abolished, of course with the exception of former Presidents of the Republic and the fact that current Senators for Life will remain in office. We believed this rule was also necessary, especially following the cut in the number of MPs, as this meant there is now a much higher proportion of Senators for Life compared with the current number of Members of Parliament.
This is a broad overview but, like I said, Minister Casellati will be coming back to this.

I would like to say that I am very proud of this reform and am confident there can be broad consensus in Parliament. If, on the other hand, there isn’t that broad consensus in Parliament, it will be up to Italians, whom we will be asking what they think through a referendum. We have done what we needed to do, we have done what we made a commitment to do, giving Italy a historic opportunity for a simple revolution that will take us into the Third Republic. However, it must be the people to decide whether they want to have this opportunity or not.    

Then, in continuity with the constitutional reform, we also brought a second measure to today’s Council of Ministers meeting regarding the ‘Mattei Plan’. I say ‘in continuity’ because we were talking about strategy and the stability that is needed to develop strategies. Strategy is precisely what the Mattei Plan, which we have been talking about since we came to office, is about: it is perhaps this government’s most significant strategic project at geopolitical level for an Italy that wants to go back to playing a leading role in the Mediterranean. The Mattei Plan is an operational policy platform on which to build a fair and equal partnership with African nations, transforming crises also into a possible opportunity to play a central role, to look far ahead, to envisage long-term projects.
We have worked very hard over these months, in particular with Minister Tajani, but the entire Council of Ministers is committed to this project.
We have worked on this plan for a long time, and now it’s a matter of finalising it. It is now about finalising the definitive draft and the definitive discussions with the countries involved and third countries, to then submit the plan to Parliament and discuss it with the European Union, with whom we have discussed this matter several times.
As this is a serious project that requires the involvement of the entire Council of Ministers, all institutional levels and our international relations, as well as collaboration with civil society, it needs governance. With the decree we have defined today, we have structured this governance, providing for a steering committee right from the start which will be chaired by the President of the Council of Ministers or, alternatively, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs who is any case the Vice-President, made up of all Ministers who are responsible for this matter, the Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces, central government’s various agencies and organisations that deal with development cooperation, representatives of state-owned companies, universities, research institutions, the third sector and experts in the matters to be discussed. The steering committee’s task is basically to coordinate all the Government’s activities and the various levels involved, keep the plan constantly up to date, monitor its implementation and submit an annual report to Parliament, because we said we would bring this plan to Parliament and we are bringing this plan to Parliament.
There is, of course, a dedicated task force and Minister Tajani, who is responsible for this, will be providing more specific details.
What I would like to say is that this speeding up, this structuring, of the Mattei Plan is also in preparation for a series of other activities we are carrying out. As you know, an Italy-Africa conference is scheduled for 28 and 29 January 2024, but this work also ties in with both the follow-up to the Conference on Development and Migration that we held here in Rome in July and Italy’s Presidency of the G7 in 2024, whose key points will include precisely the issue of relations with the African continent, the Mediterranean and migration. So, everything falls within a single strategy.
    
Deputy Minister Leo is also here, whom I thank, because another important measure from today’s Council of Ministers meeting regards the tax reform. Following the measure regarding the ‘Taxpayers’ Statute’, this additional legislative decree concerns rules for tax assessments, favouring taxpayers’ participation also during the assessment stage, designing a tax system that collaborates more with taxpayers, as per our vision; we are also taking action to reduce sanctions, clearly without lowering our guard in the fight against tax evasion. The most significant provision is the introduction of a two-year ‘concordato preventivo’ [pre-defined tax scheme] for smaller taxpayers, which is a tool that enhances cooperation with the tax authorities and represents a sign of the State’s trust towards taxpayers because, by agreeing to this arrangement, taxpayers are exempt from assessment for the following two years. So, it is a prior agreement that is entered into with the State. The Deputy Minister will be providing more specific details on this.
On the other hand, we are taking action to strengthen efforts to fight tax evasion, as we were saying, through digital IT tools, above all regarding the ability to make databases interoperable in order to be more efficient, clearly always guaranteeing data protection, which remains very important to us.

There is another measure from today’s meeting, which I also consider to be extremely important, by Minister Locatelli: a very important reform regarding disabilities, which substantially changes the approach to disabilities. Minister Locatelli will be providing you with more concrete details on this. This basically implements the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, essentially giving individuals central importance with the aim of allowing them to live and participate in social life based on a principle of equality with others. There are many very precise measures that, in my view, provide an extremely effective response and I wish to thank Minister Locatelli for this.

I will come to a close with the last measure, which is also very important: the Council of Ministers has decided to declare a state of emergency for the area in the provinces of Florence, Livorno, Pisa, Pistoia and Prato following the exceptional weather events last night which, as you know, have caused a number of deaths. The solidarity and condolences of the entire Council of Ministers, and of the whole of Italy, of course go to the families of these victims; there has been flooding and a number of towns have become isolated, with many families being forced to evacuate their homes. This morning I have obviously spoken with the Civil Protection Department, Minister [for Civil Protection and Marine Policies] Musumeci and President [of the Tuscany Region] Giani. We have decided to declare a state of emergency and we have provided for an initial allocation of EUR 5 million, which will clearly serve to guarantee the most urgent measures and actions to be taken.

I shall stop here. I believe I’ve covered all the most important things. I’ll now pass the floor to the Vice-Presidents and then to the Ministers who will provide you with more details about the measures they are responsible for.
Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]