The maneuver arrives in Brussels, Giorgetti’s barrier for the “party flags” – Corriere.it

dEconomy ministers rarely have the luxury of getting to work without immediately finding themselves subjected to the tyranny of emergencies and in this Giancarlo Giorgetti experiences the truest of Italian continuity: short-term slavery. In this case the new manager of Via XX Settembre has suffered more than chosen. He had a few days to settle the accounts of a budget law in which, paradoxically, slalom between the flags planted by the parties was not even the most difficult of the tasks awaiting him. Now, however, an even more intractable game is opening up: the great industrial crises, from the future of Tim’s network, to the transfer of control of Ita Airways, to the fate of the Priolo refinery (Syracuse) today, up to the rescue of the Acciaierie plants for the Italy in Taranto. There is no time for any of these dossiers, not even the time to oil the gears of a government that is far from perfect for now.

On his side, Giorgetti counts on a certain tranquillity in the course of the budget law. The minister appears to have developed a good working relationship with Alessandro Rivera, the director general of the Treasury who also ensures a valuable channel with Brussels. The two agree on the need for concreteness and one of the fruits should be the smooth passage of the maneuver to be examined by the EU Commission (where the test has just arrived). Not even navigation in parliament appears prohibitive: with the help of technicians, Giorgetti has reserved a margin of resources worth several hundred million to guarantee public finance objectives even in the event of assaults by the majority on the Chambers. From the tax authorities in agriculture to business incentives, there will be attempts to loosen the constraints. But the minister starts from what for him is a first result: having kept the cost of what he considers the “party flags” (including his own, the League) at one billion euros. All the more reason because some requests, in particular from Forza Italia, had a distinctly South American flavour. Certainly in this phase the agreement between Giorgetti and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seemed to work even better than that between the minister himself and his party leader, Matteo Salvini.

So if the accounts today don’t disturb too much, the only risk, not small and explicitly recognized by the minister yesterday, is that the new energy subsidies become necessary even after March: “In case we will talk about it with the EU Commission,” said Giorgetti. But it is for industrial matches that, before then, nerves of steel and a dose of luck will be needed. The Isab refinery in Priolo, controlled by the Russian crude oil producer Lukoil, is an apparently insoluble conundrum in view of the European oil embargo in Moscow which has been in effect since 5 December. It accounts for almost 15% of refining in Italy, 1,600 direct jobs and 10,000 with related industries. Even with public guarantees, Italian banks refuse to reactivate credit lines for the plant to work with crude oil from other countries: they fear US sanctions and reputational damage for dealing with Russian entities.

A divestment by Lukoil would resolve, but this too is uphill. A recent article by
Wall Street Journal
on Priolo’s role in the supply of fuel to the United States from Russian crude oil has paralyzed international investment banks: they will not help find buyers, because they too want to defend their good name. Priolo therefore moves towards stalemate and the hypothesis of a nationalization becomes concrete, before or perhaps after a bankruptcy. But that’s easier said than done: the costs, tools and political risk to the state of buying something from Lukoil (even if the group is legally based in Switzerland and exempt from sanctions) remain to be seen. Equally urgent is Tim’s network dossier. Even if the minister doesn’t like state interventionism, he understands the goal of public control of the infrastructure. But he does not see easy ways for the operation, because both the subsidiary Open Fiber and Cassa depositi e prestiti do not seem ideal vehicles at all. So the risk of a mass recourse to layoffs in Tim is anything but farfetched.

Less arduous is the dossier of the sale of Ita, where Lufthansa seems to have a rational plan, while a minority presence of the State or one of its subsidiaries would not be invasive. As for the reactivation of the Taranto steelworks, the only way will be to convince the owners of ArcelorMittal to lease it to third parties. Selling it is ruled out, with prosecutors still at work. But this is Italy, where an Economy Minister is not asked to come up with strategies: he just has to run.