The Meloni-Tajani Axis Against Salvini: No to the Amnesty

The cabinet, yesterday, dealt with taxes. The decree in 18 articles covers a wide field. It gives municipalities more time to deliberate on IMU , eliminates the traceability of payments for business trips abroad, avoids extending the sugar tax. It glosses over the bone of contention that yesterday also brought Tajani and Salvini, the deputy prime ministers, one step away from a brawl.

Tajani digs his heels in: the 6 billion in the treasure in the Minister of Economy's safe must be used to cut the Irpef, bringing it from 35 to 33%. This is the hobbyhorse of FI, which must be able to say that it has, if not actually cut, at least filed down taxes for the famous and celebrated " middle class" , even if the data instead say that taxes have further increased with the right-wing government. The blue leader has the prime minister on his side and that is no small support. Salvini, however, does not give up, he loudly calls for the contemporaneity between Tajani's reform, the Irpef, and his own, the fiscal peace. He can count on the support of the Minister of Economy Giorgetti and that is no small support either. Tajani will not listen to reason: " I am not against the scrapping of tax bills but that is a one-off measure while the Irpef cut is structural. So first let's cut the Irpef and give a hand to the middle class, then the fiscal peace".

Salvini doesn't hear it: " Giorgetti is the one who decides. The tax amnesty brings money to the State, the kind needed to cut taxes. The two things go together and in any case the Minister of Economy is there to deal with these matters". A wall against a wall with the Minister of Economy in the middle, very busy with the impossible mission of finding the money to simultaneously pass two measures that, together, are worth double what he has in the coffers. The contingency doesn't help: the end of June will be the moment of truth for a spending item that is expected to be much heavier than those around which the fight is raging today. Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO who was in Rome yesterday for the summit of the Foreign Ministers of the so-called Weimar plus format ( Germany, France and Poland plus the UK, Italy and Spain ) reiterated, also in the meeting at Chigi with the Prime Minister, that the objective is 5% of GDP devoted to military or parallel spending. About forty billion a year if all goes well.

Italy cannot say no. It can try to gain time by postponing the deadline, which Rutte expects to be 2032, until 2035. It can ask for “flexibility,” that is, a time frame that is not too definitive in the stages toward the glorious final goal and considerable flexibility on the part of a watchful Europe. It can try to smuggle investments of all sorts as “ military spending .” It is already doing so to bring NATO spending to 2% of GDP by the end of the year and will do so even more in the future. But even with all these partial loopholes, the financial effort will remain titanic. Coming up with even the few billion needed to run on parallel tracks the 33% Irpef and amnesty, because this is what is meant by fiscal peace, is a prohibitive undertaking.

But the arms race , which will officially start with the flurry of international summits scheduled for the last ten days of June, intersects and impacts the majority balance in another sense as well. Salvini has always said he is against rearmament and it will be difficult to appease him by disguising his bridge over the Strait of Messina as spending on weapons. Yesterday, Defense Minister Crosetto, responding to the AVS group leader in the Senate De Cristofaro , confirmed that each country will have to decide whether or not to adapt to the roadmap laid out by Rutte and that it will be Parliament that will do so, as is only natural. Rejecting NATO's "request" , which is actually an order dictated by Washington, would be devastating for the credibility of the Italian government and its premier. Salvini, with the threat of following up on what he has always said by voting against the surge in spending on weapons, has a real weapon in his hand to negotiate his amnesty . The problem is that for the government that weapon could prove lethal and final for everyone: for Salvini, using it would be a big risk.

FROM

David Romoli