The petrol stations relaunch the strike while the Antitrust investigates the prices

The peace between the government and the gas stations lasted for a weekend. The unions of the managers have in fact decided to confirm the strike called for 25 and 26 January, after evaluating the merits of the decree for the transparency of fuel prices which was published on Saturday in the Official Gazette. The intention was to lift the reserve tomorrow, in the light of the commitments that the government would have assumed during the technical table convened at 2.30 pm at the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy. And instead, in the same hours in which the Antitrust conducted some inspections in the offices of the companies Eni, Esso, Italiana Petroli, Kuwait and Tamoil, the managers communicated that the negotiation is not going like this.

Commenting on the facts is the Fegica union. “He cannot say today that the managers have behaved correctly and tomorrow evoke the intervention of the Guardia di Finanza and the Competition and Market Authority”, says the president Roberto Di Vincenzo in a note: “The meeting scheduled for tomorrow will certainly not be born under the best auspices, nor will it put us in a serene state of mind”.

The investigations that took place this morning in the offices of the oil companies arise from the checks that the Antitrust conducted on the violations found by the Guardia di Finanza. To the detriment of consumers there is no cartel to distort the market but the omitted communication of the price charged on the Mimit website, a price that ends up in the Observaprezzi database which can be consulted online. In some and more sporadic cases, there is also the lack of exposure or the discrepancy of the prices charged with respect to those indicated. Both violations are attributable to whoever manages the petrol pump and not to the brand, but the Agcm wants to verify that the oil companies have “adopted suitable measures or initiatives to prevent and combat this illegal conduct to the detriment of consumers”.

The situation is “serious if not perhaps ridiculous”, commented the president of Fegica Di Vincenzo, with the Authority “would investigate the oilmen not for their possible responsibilities but because they would not have supervised the petrol stations evidently guilty of having speculated on prices” .

However, the numbers of the operation remain very limited. Compared to a network of nearly 22,000 points of sale, around a thousand are involved in the Antitrust checks. In more detail, there are 376 petrol stations of Eni, 40 of Esso, 383 of Ip, 175 Kuwait and 48 Tamoil. According to the data that the Guardia di Finanza has shared with the Antitrust, the violations committed would be 2,809 out of 5,187 checks carried out and the disputed facts concern for more than 2,000 cases the omitted weekly communication of the prices to the ministry and the rest the lack of exposure or discrepancy of the prices charged compared to those indicated.

The new decree will add other obligations to those currently in force. The communication of prices to the ministry becomes daily, while until yesterday the managers had to let prices know only in the event of a change and at least once a week. There will then be a new sign with the regional average price to be displayed. Gas station operators have 15 days to adapt to the new measures, which they consider useless in terms of the effect on prices and potentially harmful. “The possibilities of error and therefore of being sanctioned are multiplied”, explain insiders.

Tomorrow Minister Adolfo Urso will receive the representatives of the supply chain, from managers to distribution, logistics and refining companies. But after the Antitrust fuss, the unions would like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to intervene directly: “We are appealing directly to the Prime Minister to reassume the direction of the negotiations to the collegial responsibility of the government and to stop this continuous trickle of initiatives and measures taken by individual exponents, who each seem to play their own game”, says Di Vincenzo. The strike is currently confirmed.

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• Maria Carla Sicily

• Born in Cosenza in 1988, she has lived in Rome for more than ten years. Every year she thinks that she will leave the city of potholes and the Colosseum, but so far she has always found good reasons to stay. One of these is il Foglio, where you started working in 2017. you Today you are in charge of coordinating Foglio.it.