Businesses call for effective measures on energy: the Bills Decree is not enough

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had set out with the best of intentions to alleviate the cost of energy for families and businesses, but then the bill decree that was approved was written differently and Parliament, which could have made the necessary corrections and strengthened it, did not do so. There is therefore an urgent need for a round table at Palazzo Chigi to adopt structural measures to reduce the energy costs of the industrial world, which today more than ever suffers from a strong competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world. This is the alarm and the appeal that comes from the companies, with the declarations of the delegate of the President of Confindustria for energy, Aurelio Regina.

Apart from the measure on compensation for indirect ETS costs, which was already provided for in the budget law and should have been implemented some time ago, to the value of EUR 600 million in the decree, 'there is nothing for companies'. Among other things, Regina explains, it is a measure that only concerns certain industrial sectors, provided for by a European rule and implemented for years throughout the continent, except by us.

It is 'madness' to have enacted this text without accepting the proposals of businesses, first and foremost the proposal to extend the scope of the rule that resets system charges to zero for low-voltage users (which are the very small businesses) also to the users of businesses connected to medium voltage, i.e. all small and medium-sized Italian businesses, without affecting the public budget, but redistributing the benefit proportionally between low and medium voltage. This proposal would have given support to realities such as the textile district of Prato, the mechanics of Emilia Romagna, the food industry in Campania, Puglia, Sicily, Emilia, or the pharmaceutical industry of Lazio, the automotive components of Piedmont or Lombardy, the furniture and design of the Marche, the footwear industry of Veneto. These are just a few of the many examples to show how damaging it can be not to take care of the cost of energy for the survival of the excellence of our industrial districts. The energy bill of the entire Italian industry is well over 20 billion euros per year, and companies continue to suffer an energy spread that exceeds 35% and reaches more than 80% in comparison with European countries, the USA and China. "It is those companies that realise the 626 billion export that keeps our economy alive. Among other things, this is happening at a delicate time such as the one we are currently experiencing, with the war on tariffs that threatens to break down the margins of companies and undermine their survival," Regina continues.

The decree got the final green light from the Senate yesterday, with 99 yes, 62 no and one abstained. Allocated EUR 3 billion, the main measures include an extraordinary contribution of EUR 200 in favour of households with Isee up to EUR 25,000, a strengthening of protections for vulnerable customers, the goodbye to the click day, and the inclusion of the discount on the invoice to obtain the household appliance bonus.

"None of the zero-cost measures proposed by Confindustria were approved," such as the one that would allow production areas to obtain authorisation for the production of renewable energy for self-consumption. "We cannot explain, then, why our petition to eliminate the differential between the price of Italian gas and that of Central and Northern Europe, which would have reduced costs by about 1.3 billion euros per year, or our proposal for a gas and biomethane release worth about 600-700 million euros, was not heard by Parliament, without impacting on public accounts or bills, which would have lowered the price of gas for three years for Italian companies and would have accompanied them on the path to decarbonisation, as has been done with the Energy Release for electricity,' Regina continued. Not even Parliament has had the sensitivity to make the necessary corrections, in a situation in which the bankruptcies of industrial companies show that the high cost of energy is one of the main causes.