Why does the government want to give state money to the private association Assoprevidenza?
Assoprevidenza, which brings together part of the Italian pension funds, will merge with the third party "Committee for the promotion and development of supplementary pensions", forfeiting a treasury of 29.5 million euros of public funds. Giuliano Cazzola's comment
This time the "little hand" was really there and it arrived "like a thief in the night" on Thursday with an amendment to the Pa2 decree during the joint session of commissions I and XI of the Chamber.
Start Magazine has already illustrated the terms of the story , indicating its dynamics and calling into question the protagonists. In particular, he clarified that the operation had already been attempted in a previous provision (the bill decree), but that it had not succeeded because the Quirinale had judged the matter extraneous.
BUT WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE AMENDMENT?
The amendment signed by the deputies of IV and FdI (a convergence considered by many to be singular) has aroused many perplexities as well as numerous criticisms (very heavy those coming from the trade union confederations). The problem is very simple: the reasons for this amendment are not understood.
Since there is no general interest, the suspicion that there is a particular interest is legitimate. It is not clear whether it is "Assoprevidenza" – an association that brings together part of the Italian pension funds – which flows into the third party "Committee for the promotion and development of supplementary pension funds", or if the process takes place in reverse. The substance changes little, because the protagonist of the unification is a treasury of 29.5 million euros of public funds to be allocated precisely to Assoprevidenza, over a decade, of which a suitable advance will be disbursed within the current year .
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE
The Committee for the promotion and development of supplementary pensions is an old acquaintance. It was established on 21 February 2011 thanks to a resolution voted by the Labor Commission of the Chamber which committed the Executive to "invest strongly in the potential of the pension fund system, in particular by evaluating the opportunity to support any organisational, promotional and information initiatives, also on the initiative of the bodies and structures concerned, aimed at putting the same funds into the system". The objective that was at the heart of the then president of the Commission, Silvano Moffa, was that of directing pension funds to invest in the real economy. For this reason, the Committee was recognized as having a policy-making function on investments.
It has never been understood whether the operation never took off, as happens with many issues whose implementation requires a subsequent ministerial decree, which ends up being forgotten at the first change of the holder of the competent ministry. It was necessary to find some other executive who would fall into temptation. It fell to the Conte 2 government which, in 2019 with the decree-law 124 had gone so far as to establish a contribution for its operation of 1.5 million for 2020 and 2 million from 2021 to 2034 (the amounts that are fished out in the Iv-FdI amendment) for a total of 29.5 million.
Again the horse did not drink. The Ministry of Labor has never disbursed a single euro, also because, even in that case, there was no trace of the expected ministerial decree. At this point it is good to ask oneself about the ministry's position, because in the joint meeting of the Commissions, the government had to express an opinion on the amendment. The outcome suggests that it was positive.
ASSOPREVIDENZA? A QUESTIONABLE TRANSACTION
In the can-can caused by the affair, there is a rumor that Minister Calderone does not agree with an operation that is questionable in itself: it is not easy to understand the reasons why public resources – albeit modest – must be allocated to a subject private sector such as Assoprevidenza, to which the so-called pre-existing funds are mainly associated which, due to the effect of the defined benefit scheme, suffer from the same disease as compulsory social security, in the sense that the number of taxpayers is reduced while the disbursements of pensions increase how many gradually accrue the right?
The logic of the funded supplementary pension scheme clearly clashes with the very existence of the Committee for the promotion and development of the supplementary pension scheme, whose aims have never gone beyond the misunderstanding that had led to its establishment, in disguise, so much so that at Work they had always washed their hands of it. It therefore appears even more strange that it is the law that decides a civil union with a private association, as if one wanted to bring together two weaknesses, in a context in which the private pension sector is closely observed by many public bodies (from Covip, at the Mefop). Such operations, opaque in purpose, can also cause mithridatization processes.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/assoprevidenza-cosa-succede/ on Tue, 01 Aug 2023 05:37:27 +0000.