Gentiloni: that is, Italy does not have a European commissioner
Italy, unfortunately, does not have a European commissioner. In theory Paolo Gentiloni would be there, but his presence is so irrelevant as to be, in fact, theoretical.
A commissioner halved
When the European commissioners were appointed, the real European powers, that is, the Brussels bureaucracy mixed with the powers of Paris and Berlin, decided that Italy, also from the point of view of the European executive, had to be placed under protection. So they created, alongside the usual figures of vice presidents, that of "Executive Vice Presidents". As Cottarelli rightly noted in this video , Gentiloni was hierarchically subordinated to Valdis Dombrovskis, executive vice president who concentrated in himself all the delegations of the economic sector.
His task was to carry out the orders of the executive vice president, thus appearing to be a true subordinate of the Latvian, and all this has been seen in recent years. The figure of Gentiloni was that of an alibi for the Commission, which was thus able to affirm that Italy was adequately represented. In reality, the third European country not only does not have an executive vice-president, but only a kind of undersecretary.
An experience to forget
In theory, within the narrowness of his delegations, and always under the supervision of Dombrovskis, Gentiloni should have dealt with the thorny tax problem: the EU has internal tax problems rather than external tax problems, with real tax havens in the EU itself, starting from Ireland, to Luxembourg, to the Netherlands. Countries that guarantee extremely low taxes and which have become the refuge of multinationals, from American web companies to Ikea (which is owned by a foundation based in the Netherlands, and practically pays no taxes) to almost all the main Italian companies, family, whether public or listed.
Gentiloni, in his mandate, should have improved at least fiscal transparency within the EU. As a definitely non-sovereignist organization like Oxfarm says, this objective has been completely missed. The directive on fiscal transparency that followed and which should have made it possible to know, at the very least, where and how much multinational companies pay taxes, does not guarantee knowing practically nothing. The multinationals were stronger than Gentiloni, and they didn't even struggle and, fortunately, ours was the exponent of the party always ready to shout against tax evasion.
Against Italy? No, simply irrelevant
There are many dossiers concerning Italy in Europe: from the ALI Lufthansa merger, opposed by Paris which does not want competition for AirFrance, to the topic of the reform of the Stability Pact, to the implementation of the CBAM, to the issues of trade relations with China . To make it clear how secondary and irrelevant it is, it is enough to point out that Dombrovskis , not Gentiloni, will discuss the problems of trade relations with China, a customs issue that would interest him.
To say that Gentiloni does not serve Italy's interests is perhaps not true: he simply does nothing. His inaction, in the current crisis situation, is obviously harmful, but, fortunately, there is less than a year left until his mandate expires. We hope next time to have an Italian Commissioner in the Commission….
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The article Gentiloni: or Italy does not have a European commissioner comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gentiloni-ovvero-litalia-non-ha-un-commissario-europeo/ on Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:55:41 +0000.