Good afternoon everyone.
I would have liked to be there in person with you at the General Assembly of Confindustria Venezia-Rovigo [Venice-Rovigo industry association] and Assindustria Venetocentro [Padua-Treviso industry association]. I believe this aggregation initiative to be very important indeed and I wish all those involved the best of luck. However, the many tight deadlines we are facing and the tragic events in Ischia, which we are following by the hour, have prevented me from being able to attend in person. 
I nevertheless wanted to take part, albeit briefly and via video link, due to my long-standing relationship with Vincenzo Marinese [President of Confindustria Venezia], whom I wish to warmly greet and thank, together with the President of Assindustria Venetocentro, Leopoldo Destro. I of course also wish to greet the President of Confindustria [the Italian association of manufacturing and service companies], Carlo Bonomi. I also wanted to take part today given the importance that, as you know, the whole Government and I have always given to production categories and to discussion with intermediaries.
Since taking office a month ago, the Government has already held initial discussions with all trade associations, and we intend to steadfastly continue this dialogue throughout our mandate. Of course, we would have preferred to have more time for discussion, especially before the budget law, but we were, and are, in a race against time. We had to define the fiscal manoeuvre in a very limited amount of time, while still using our first measures and, above all, this measure which is the main one in the Government’s calendar, to provide as clear an outline as possible of the path we intend to follow, with choices that would provide an indication of what our priorities will be. These priorities undoubtedly include economic growth, starting of course with securing Italy’s productive fabric – with particular regard to tackling the main emergency we are facing (high energy costs) -, focusing on producers and strengthening the middle class as well as supporting weaker members of society, families, citizens’ purchasing power and those with the lowest incomes.
We have tried to implement many measures, despite the tight time frames and limited resources, considering that the EUR 30 billion we freed up with the Update to the Economy and Finance Document [‘Nota di Aggiornamento al DEF’] have gone in full towards combatting high energy bills, in order to support households and businesses. However, this has not prevented us from fulfilling a number of commitments and giving some signals, such as: increasing the ‘assegno unico’ [‘single allowance’] by 50% for children up to the age of one and up to the age of three in the case of families with three or more children; reducing VAT to 5% for early childhood products; allocating EUR 500 million to combat high shopping bills for the most vulnerable households. We have also decided to make measures to support people with disabilities structural in nature and have provided for an indexing of pensions to above all help the lowest amounts, starting with a 120% revaluation of minimum pensions. We have taken measures that embody our social vision; I am saying this to you because the Government shares this social vision with Confindustria. I am also saying this to you because, together with these choices, we have dedicated most of the resources and measures precisely to production companies, to reaffirm a principle called into question too often in the past but that this Government has very clear ideas about: a welfare state cannot exist if there is no one generating wealth upstream. In this regard, and forgive me for wanting to quote a few figures here, but I believe it is worth recalling the efforts we are trying to make, also to allow you to tell us how we can improve. In addition to the billions already allocated with the ‘energy decree’, the fiscal manoeuvre allocates EUR 9 billion to increase the tax credit for companies to help them deal with high energy costs: we have increased the tax credit from 40% to 45% for energy-intensive companies and from 30% to 35% for other businesses. We have refinanced the excise tax rebate, albeit opting to reduce the size of this measure (we do, however, stand ready to intervene should it become necessary), we have considered an improvement in price conditions and have extended the 5% VAT rate on natural gas for motor vehicles. I believe another important message is the fact that we have decided to release our natural gas deposits, allowing companies that are most affected by rising gas prices to obtain reduced-cost energy; this is an important message because Italy must go back to producing energy and what needs to be done must be done. We have confirmed the 2% cut in the tax wedge for incomes of up to EUR 35 thousand, adding a further 1% tax wedge cut for incomes of up to EUR 20 thousand. As you know, we have set ourselves the target of reducing the tax wedge by at least five points for incomes of up to EUR 35 thousand by the end of this legislature, 2/3 of which regarding workers and 1/3 companies. This initial signal is clearly not sufficient, but we want to continue along this path and I am duty-bound to remind you that this measure is worth more than EUR 4.2 billion – the most significant allocation of the entire economic manoeuvre after energy measures. We have postponed the entry into force of the sugar tax and plastic tax, which would have had serious consequences for our industrial system. We have reduced taxes on employee productivity bonuses: from 10% to 5% for a maximum of EUR 3 thousand per year, which is in addition to the tax relief on fringe benefits up to EUR 3 thousand. We have begun implementing the proposal that we’ve summed up with “the more you hire, the less you pay”, zeroing contributions for those who hire women, young people up to the age of 36 or those receiving the ‘reddito di cittadinanza’  [‘citizenship income’] allowance, provided that this creates more employment. 
We have also dedicated specific measures to the self-employed, raising the flat-tax threshold for those with a VAT number from EUR 65 thousand to EUR 85 thousand in turnover and introducing a 15% flat tax on the increase in income compared with the maximum of the previous three years. Starting from the end of next year, we have decided to remove the possibility for those able to work to receive the ‘citizenship income’ benefit because – we said we’d do it and we have – a fair State does not provide people who can work with the same assistance plan as those who cannot. In 2023, these people will not be able to receive ‘citizenship income’ for more than eight months – we need this ‘bridge’ period in order to implement the necessary measures to help them enter the job market – and, in any case, this benefit will cease to be paid at the first job offer that is refused. This measure is based on common sense and we intend to defend it against any instrumental attack.
I could go on and on but I don’t want to bore you with the to-do list. I would instead like to dedicate part of my speech here today to some considerations that explain the context in which we have made our initial choices. This is, of course, only the beginning, but it says a lot about where we want to go. Of course, we want to do more, but I think it is clear that paying attention to companies and their workers has been and continues to be one of our top priorities. However, we are obviously aware that these measures – as with the others we will pursue – will lose all effectiveness unless, at the same time, we are able to ensure companies can operate in a different context to the one they have found themselves in until now in terms of their relationship with the state and government. This is why we immediately wanted to provide a clear indication of our objectives, giving substance to two key principles for us (it is no coincidence that I referred to these principles when I was sworn in and during my address to Parliament on the Government programme): do not disturb producers and ensure discussions with intermediaries once again play a central role.
I would like to say a few words on these concepts. As President Bonomi also often says, politics does not create employment through decrees. We are coming from a legislature that told us it was possible to combat poverty with a decree, that it was possible to create employment with a decree, that it was possible to do very many things inside political buildings. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Wealth is created by companies and their workers; the job of central government is to create the conditions for these companies to be able to operate in the best way possible, to grow and get things done, without having to worry about a State that fights them rather than helping and supporting them. This is also what the “Do not disturb producers” concept is about. It means the State guaranteeing that enterprises are able to do business, make plans, have certainty with regard to their investments and make the most of the opportunities on offer. Politics may well imagine the best things and introduce wonderful measures, but if action is not then taken to create the conditions for those possibilities to be used and deployed, then all of it is useless. In my view, the first condition is that companies must be made competitive and put in a position to be able to expand, increase their client portfolios and grow in wealth, because the wealth they produce means wealth for the entire nation.
This is also why, in addition to the manoeuvre, we are for example making the ‘ombudsman for enterprises’ measure operational, whereby the Ministry for Enterprises and Made in Italy is entitled to take over authorisation procedures that are blocked with other administrations, in order to provide certainty regarding investment time frames, which I believe is a matter of fundamental importance. 
We are carefully examining the projects that need to be completed using the resources of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (‘NRRP’), works project by works project, tender process by tender process, and beyond, because Italian companies have to know what will be done in order to make adequate preparations and ensure they are ready and competitive when the works projects get underway. We are also dealing with the issue of expensive materials because, unless this issue is addressed seriously, the NRRP resources unfortunately risk not being deployed.
This is why we are also working on a Procurement Code, as clear rules are needed for everyone and everyone, starting with the State and the Public Administration, must respect them. This Code must become a pillar of the relationship between the State and enterprises, a reliable point of reference that must not be subject to continuous changes, as invariably occurred in the past when it would be discovered, on a case-by-case basis, that the regulations written behind closed doors did not then work in practice.
This pillar must be built around one word: trust. Trust in companies and in workers. When I say that the Government firmly believes in the importance of discussions with intermediaries, I do not mean that we will present you with proposals so you can tell us whether you like them or not; I mean that we must set targets together and work together to find solutions in order to pave the way to reach those objectives. This is why involving intermediaries, the challenge of dialogue, is not a formality. I would really like to be able to discuss issues as people, worlds, entities that are rowing in the same direction, towards the same objectives. This means working together to study and come up with the proposals, solutions and responses that Italy, and in particular the production sector, needs, and not only. We are aware that, if industry performs well, then the nation will perform well. It is of course up to politics to bring everything together, and it is up to politics to take responsibility for the choices made; together with the Government, I intend to take full responsibility for the choices we will make, even if it costs us in terms of votes. We are here to do what is right for the nation, and not what is useful for us.
This can be seen in our choice regarding ‘citizenship income’: in Italy, for far too long now, efforts have been made to destroy the culture of work, which underpins our nation and is the basis of article 1 of the Italian Constitution. This choice underlines the fact that this Government intends to rebuild the work culture and ethic, and to do so together with businesses and manufacturers, which I believe sends an important message. Although we are of course aware that the tax wedge cut needs to be even more effective and requires greater resources, I do think it is worth recognising that we have decided to embark on this path immediately, and we have done so to show that we have no intention of backtracking. Along this path, there are obviously many other objectives we want to achieve, in relation to which I consider the relationship with you to be fundamental, starting with Italy’s industrial strategy.  It is all well and good to have discussions on topics relating to daily needs, but I believe that the great challenge for discussions today is to reason about strategy. For too long now, this nation has not had a strategic policy, an industrial policy, an industrial strategy. I believe we must go back to choosing where we want to be in the geo-strategic context and what we want to invest in, and then focus resources on those objectives, starting with defending the national interest which, for us, is an objective also at European level. I am thinking of the matter of the price cap, the gas market or protecting the packaging sector, which I also discussed at the European Commission (in these days, the packaging sector has been exposed to risks; a small signal has arrived, I believe also thanks to the work done by the Government). 
There is a lot of work to do, and I shall now come to a close, and we need the best this nation has to offer. This Government’s doors will always be open to those who wish to make proposals and those who have effective solutions. I am certain that Confindustria will always be a key player along this path, as we intend to pursue it alongside our production and industrial system, since no one better than those who do business can know what the culture of work means. It is also my view that no one better than those who do business can know how important it is to respect commitments, and this is something that also politics should learn. As we want to respect the commitments we have undertaken with Italian citizens, we can follow your good example in this regard. 
Thank you all and my apologies again for not being there in person. I wish you all the best with your work and good luck with this adventure.

[Courtesy translation]