These days I am preparing the short speech I will give during the seminar on sustainable mobility. Reading the various rules and taking a look at the regulations for PEBA and PUMS I realized that here in the south (but in general in almost all of Italy) there would be an immense job to do. Work that should have started almost 30 years ago, laws in hand and subsequent amendments and additions ( Law 41/86 paragraphs 20, 21 and 22 for example). Why has none of what was written into law actually been implemented? Why has it been legislated? Have we citizens had to pay twice for the failures of the State which first legislates, paying for studies and the implementation of programs, and then does not act, leaving everything to chance or to the remote control of the Ministry in question? We citizens have paid for these failures twice: the first when the State has spent our money to legislate, the second (it would be more correct to say the second ones) every time we have difficulties; to move within an urban centre, every time the train or bus lets us down because there is no money to maintain the vehicles, every time we get stuck in traffic, every time we are unable to use the pavement in a wheelchair because it does not comply with the law.
I wonder how the Italian state can still be part of Europe and lag so far behind at the same time. How is it possible that states like Estonia, which entered the EU only ten years earlier, are light years ahead of us?
We Italians pay taxes, part of these taxes are poured into the coffers of the European Union which redistributes them to all Member States in the form of public funds for the most various activities; Italy is not even able to recover that money to carry out activities it has already legislated for (spending our money). Are we really surprised by the fines that the EU inflicts on us, by the hundreds of infringement procedures that are open against us? Do we really believe that Europe is the culprit for Italy's ills? It's not that we are exercising passing the buck, Italian-style to morally relieve ourselves of the responsibility that we have looked the other way for 40 years now?
Who knows whether these questions will ever be answered.
The Italian ruling class lacks a strategic and long-term vision, it lacks foresight, at least until we talk about aspects that concern the community and not personal interests.
