Fuel excise duty and housing plan, start of the Cdm

The Council of Ministers convened to launch two decree-laws, one for the renewal of the fuel excise tax cut and the second for the housing plan, has begun at Palazzo Chigi. Also on the table is a clearance bill. Also under consideration by the government is a legislative decree on equal pay for men and women, on which the final go-ahead is expected, and a legislative decree for the promotion of the floriculture sector.

The meeting will also be attended by the President of Sardinia Alessandra Todde, as the draft resolutions on environmental impact assessment proceedings for projects of interest to the Region and on the opposition filed by the Ministry of Culture and the Region itself against the determination to conclude the services conference will be examined. A press conference is scheduled to be held at the end of the meeting, at which the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure Matteo Salvini, among others, are expected to speak.

Charting the course of the new decree on fuels was the Prime Minister herself, who spoke of 'a further extension' of the cut in excise duties expiring on 1 May: this time, however, the intervention will be 'shorter' than the previous ones and will intervene 'no longer horizontally', i.e. the cut in excise duties for diesel and petrol (with the decree of 18 March and then with the subsequent extension it was 24.4 cents per litre) will be differentiated. The discount should therefore be more substantial for diesel, which has had a more significant increase than petrol. The duration of the extension depends not only on the political choices (the premier mentioned the need to see how the situation develops), but also on the available resources. The first measure in mid-March, which envisaged a 20-day excise cut, cost 417.4 million (plus another 110 between tax credits for haulage and fishing), covered by cuts to ministries. For the subsequent 25-day extension, 500 million were put on the plate, of which 200 million were covered by the increase in VAT revenue and another 300 million recovered from Ets resources not yet used. For the new intervention, the work of the Mef's technicians continues unabated to identify resources, and the orientation should be to limit the extension to 15 days, for an expenditure that should not exceed half a billion. The decree should also contain an extension of the tax credit for the 'haulage sector', which has already announced a truck stop for the end of May. Transport Minister Matteo Salvini has assured that the government will do everything to avoid the blockade, 'with additional resources from taxation': in particular, he explained, work is being done to increase the tax credit with the aim of covering more than 50 per cent of the higher costs incurred.

Also on the Council of Ministers' menu is the long-awaited Housing Plan, which the government has been working on for some time and which, in the Prime Minister's intentions, aims to make over 100,000 homes available, including social housing and low-cost housing, over the next ten years. The measure, expected today, is expected to provide resources of about 4 billion euro. This is learnt from several majority sources. The allocations are being finalised even on the eve of the meeting, and there are those in the centre-right who go so far as to estimate a total figure of between 4 and 5 billion.