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The electoral campaign period usually sees the exponents of parties and coalitions compete to win center stage. Over the years we have become accustomed to more absurd election promises from various parts. Usually we appeal to the aspects closest to the life of the voters, such as taxes or pensions or promise amazing public works – which are not carried out on time. The 2022 election campaign is no different: Silvio Berlusconi promises to plant a million trees a year, Luigi Di Maio says he wants to zero VAT on bread and pasta, Giorgia Meloni takes charge of presidentialism.
As we immerse ourselves in a busy summer, we have collected some of the promises (never fulfilled or only partially fulfilled) of Italian political leaders during the last electoral rounds. Some are megalomaniacs, others simply impossible to carry out, still others are based on false information and some are now so inflated that we hardly notice that they are in the programs anymore. How many do you remember?
The referendum on the exit from the euro
The original Five Star Movement never hid its hostility towards the single currency and the European Union. In view of the 2014 European elections, Grillo and associates presented the proposal for a referendum on Italy’s stay in the European Union and in the eurozone. In 2017, Di Maio reiterated on television that “If it were to get to the referendum, which I consider an ‘extrema ratio’, it is clear that I would vote for the exit, because it would mean that Europe has not listened to us ”. Di Maio then backtracked several times on his position. According to the Italian Constitution it is not possible to subject international treaties to a referendum (according to article 75 of the constitution). Instead, it would have been possible to hold a consultative referendum on the matter (such as it happened in 1989, with the creation of an ad hoc constitutional law), but the organization of such a consultation would have place a series of legal problems very complex, related to the contrast between constitutional law and community law.
The abolition of the car tax
Silvio Berlusconi is neither new to hoaxes nor to shooting in the name of absurdity. In 2017 he promised to “abolish the stamp on the first car”, If he had risen to the government. More recently echoed him Luigi Di Maio. Not much has changed since then. We all still pay the stamp, and Berlusconi is still candidate in the political elections, as did Di Maio.
The abolition of the Rai Fee
Another great classic: the abolition of the Rai fee. A “bad tax” he defined it Renzi in 2018. In 2019, Gianluigi Paragone, then senator of the M5S (today he runs with his party, Italexit) presented a bill for its abolition. Today, the RAI license fee is paid directly into the electricity bill, but will be spun off starting in 2023.
The abolition of excise duties on petrol and the war in Ethiopia
This promise is quite transversal to political forces: from Matteo Renzi to Matteo Salvini, the cut or abolition of fuel excise duties has been a very popular workhorse. In 2014, a Door to door Renzi She said that within the year he would go to “clean up, curtail, eliminate, all these ridiculous rumors”, referring precisely to the various subheadings of fuel taxes. The same commitment appeared in the “government contract” of the first Conte government, with reference to the “anachronistic components” of the excise duties on petrol. This expression refers to the common conception according to which, with excise duties on petrol, we would still be paying for catastrophic events or war initiatives of the past, such as the Ethiopian war of 1936. As demonstrated by a fact check by Political report card on the occasion of the last elections, it is of a buffalo. At the moment, excise duties on gasoline have been cut by the Draghi government to contain the costs of the current war.
No more poverty
We close the cycle of abolitions with the flagship: Luigi di Maio who, with the budget law of 2018, said, verbatim, that he would “abolish poverty”. This is not a real election promise, since Di Maio was already in government when he said these words, but he certainly deserves a place of honor. Where to start debunking this claim? Maybe enough the latest Istat data: in 2021 there were nearly two million families (and more than five million individuals) in Italy living below the absolute poverty line. Sure, citizenship income can have had positive effectsi, but it still has many limitations. And certainly, especially after the pandemic and the recession, poverty is far from being abolished.
The minimum pensions of one thousand euros
Another of Silvio Berlusconi’s great workhorses is the increase in pensions. He promised it in 2001 (at the time the promised figure was one million lire), then blaming the euro for the failure to implement his plan – which only affected a limited number of people. For the last time it is he stated in 2019. “One of the things we will do with the next government is to increase the minimum pensions to 1000 euros for thirteen months”.
The bridge over the Strait
Also this year, as in every election, the timeless promise of the bridge over the Strait of Messina returns. Salvini dusted it off in an interview to Radio24. “The bridge over the Strait of Messina? I want it.” Giuseppe Conte said he would evaluate it as a destination for the Recovery Fund funds, Matteo Renzi will dust it off on the occasion of the referendum campaign, in 2001 he was in both Rutelli and Berlusconi’s electoral programs. But his story goes much further back. The first feasibility studies date back to the early years of the unification of Italy and even in Roman times they were drawn up (e maybe made) projects in this sense.
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