Stop, ladies and gentlemen, tufts: the rules for deputies’ railway tickets have changed

Farewell to the ladies and gentlemen. The Chamber changes the regulation for high-speed train blocks available to deputies. Last January, Il Foglio recounted the strange race of parliamentarians to grab tickets for Italo and Freccia Rossa during the last term of the legislature.

As soon as the government crisis broke out, with the election date already set, about forty MPs knowing they weren’t re-elected or candidates went to the Montecitorio travel agency to get packets of coupons with the aim of using them even once they left the Room. Everything happened between July, August and September with the work in the Chamber practically blocked for the electoral campaign.

This newspaper called them “ladies tuff tuff”. Most of them, at least three quarters, had been elected in the M5s (and then moved on to other parties, such as Luigi Di Maio’s Civic Commitment).

After the uproar of the news, the offices of the Chamber, at the urging of the quaestors, decided to change the regulation. First of all, an application is being developed that will allow single tickets to be purchased from mobile phones (the service will always be handled by the travel agency affiliated with Montecitorio). The app will be operational from May.

Not only that: each parliamentarian will be able to continue to request a carnet (of ten trips at a time) but every three months, thus avoiding the embarrassing accumulation effect discovered by the Foglio. The quaestors want to extend the period to six months, even if since the news broke the requests for bundles of tickets have dropped to almost zero.

The new regulation also provides for a very strict constraint: deputies will be able to take advantage of the tickets as long as they remain in office. And no further.

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• Simone Canettieri

• Viterbese, 1982. On paper since September 2020 as editor. Eight years for the Messenger (in the news and for the politician). Even earlier in Emilia Romagna as a correspondent (between the birth of the M5s and the earthquake), in Florence as editor of the Nuovo Corriere (dealing with crime and judicial news every morning). He started in Viterbo at 19 with skating and minor football, then at 26 he got his first job. He has written for Oggi, Linkiesta, travel and gastronomy inserts. He collaborated with RadioRai, but also with local television and radio stations that never paid. Agnes 2020 Award for printed paper in Italy.