The first law signed by Meloni is a slap to the competition

There are not only bathing establishments, taxi drivers, notaries, public transport companies they will continue not to see their concessions put out to tender. The profound aversion to competition is an increasingly widespread pathology in Italian politics, on the right and on the left. The paternalistic idea prevails that it is the state and not the market that regulates prices and tariffs, that protects the thousand interests that only have disadvantages from a general wave in which free prices determine the best and most efficient offer of the service according to customer evaluation. And so Italy’s general productivity, of course, continues to languish.

A completely analogous story is that of the bill that is about to be approved in a Bersagliere style by Parliament: it took the Chamber three weeks to pass from the commission to the classroom with a final vote without changes. Law that comes from a bill first signed by Meloni – and this explains its speed – of the last legislature. That aims to protect small professionals from the notorious greed of large companies. Step back: the discipline of professional fees has been a battle for many years. The minimums had been abolished in times of liberalization, but with the decree law 148/2017 the desire to protect a fair compensation for professionals in relations with banking and insurance companies and large companies reappeared, to avoid alleged situations of imbalance in the contractual relationships between professionals and “strong” customers.

It was expected nullity of the clauses prepared by the client companies where the fees were not in line with the ministerial parameters that became mandatory, while at the time of the liberalizations they were due only for cases of lack of agreement between the parties. In fact, the decree reintroduced a supervised tariff for professional services, repealed in 2012 because it limited competition in the market for such services, replacing it with a reference to the “parameters” defined by the supervising Ministry. The Meloni law undergoing lightning-fast approval goes much further. Not only the “strong contractors” no longer become only large companies but all medium-sized companies with over 50 employees or 10 million euros in turnover. But it will be up to the ordinary court to rule on whether the compensation is fair or not with respect to ministerial parameters. And the icing on the cake, for professionals enrolled in professional orders and colleges, it will be up to the orders themselves to “sanction” those who freely accept lower rates. The opinion of adequacy of the orders becomes a real enforceable title, as if the orders were equivalent to the state judge. And, be careful, the ax does not fall only on contractual agreements unilaterally dictated by the client, but on all agreements, even those freely agreed upon but reported by professionals left dry. And not just the poor little individual professionals, but any service provision agreement that also concerns associated firms in corporate and multi-specialised form.

Extreme summary: instead of encouraging the emergence of increasingly extensive professional associations able to offer better integrated services to the company at lower cost, the exact opposite. Small is beautiful and small must be defended. The Antitrust wrote in 2017 that the disguised reintroduction of professional tariffs was “in stark contrast with the liberalization processes which, in more recent years, have affected our legal system also in the sector of regulated professions”. In fact, by linking the fairness of the compensation to the tariff parameters contained in the ministerial decrees, these provisions effectively reintroduced the minimum tariffs, with the effect of “limiting competitive comparisons between members of the same category, rather than protecting the interests of the community”. Any critical issues related to the presence of users of professional services with high demand power – continued the Antitrust – should not be addressed by setting a minimum price for the provision of services, which would have the only effect of altering the correct functioning of the market dynamics and hinder the spontaneous adjustment of supply and demand. What will the Antitrust say now, in the presence of an even stronger squeeze? Bets are accepted: whatever the Antitrust said, current politics would make a big moustache of it.