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Italian MPs to lose lavish travel perks

Italy has been in the throes of an economic crisis since 2008, but that hasn’t stopped the state spending €900,000 a year on lavish first-class travel and chauffeur-driven cars for its MPs, as well as continuing to pay the travel expenses of former ones.

Published: 6 August 2015 11:44 CEST

Italian MPs to lose lavish travel perks

Italian MPs will no longer enjoy the privileges of first class air travel...at least for long-haul journeys. Photo: Bryan McManus/AFP

But some of those perks have been scrapped after the lower house of parliament on Wednesday abolished first class air travel for current MPs, while former ones will have to pay for their own train, sea and air travel, Il Tempo reported.

From January 2016, MPs will have to travel in economy class. But all is not completely lost – if they’re on a plane for more than four hours they’ll still be able to enjoy the privileges of first class travel.

Still, the move was a victory for Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which brought in the motion for debate more than two years ago.

“Thanks to us there’ll no longer be trips that citizens pay for and we’ll save almost €1 million a year. Let’s move forward in this direction,” said the Five Star Movement deputy, Riccardo Fraccaro.

As Italians struggle, either without work or on low incomes, to make ends meet, their leaders enjoy a salary that is far higher than their EU counterparts.

Italian MPs earn an average €172,000 a year, according to the most recent data from 2013. This compares to €96,000 earned by British MPs, and the €81,000 that French MPs take home.

Although salaries are yet to be trimmed, expenses' cutbacks were among premier Matteo Renzi's first tasks when he took over the leadership in February 2014.

Phone allowances were cut while a fleet of state-owned cars were sold on eBay.

But it is not only MPs who earn a lot – the barbers paid to style their hair can earn up to €99,000 a year, and that's after a €37,000 trim last year.

Read more: President's barber: €99k state snippers overpaid

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Was Norway ill prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic?

Photo by Eirik Skarstein on Unsplash

The 450-page report was submitted to Prime Minister Erna Solberg by medical professor Stener Kvinnsland, who led the review.

The commission found that, generally, Norway had handled the pandemic well compared to the rest of Europe. That was in part due to citizens taking infection control measures on board.

“After a year of pandemic, Norway is among the countries in Europe with the lowest mortality and lowest economic impact. The authorities could not have succeeded if the population had not supported the infection control measures;” the report states.

However, the commission’s report also outlined that Norway did not properly prepare itself for the pandemic.

“The authorities knew that a pandemic was the most likely national crisis to have the most negative consequences. Nevertheless, they were not prepared when the extensive and serious Covid-19 pandemic came,” it said.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg said during an interview with the commission, conducted as part of its work, that the government did not have an infection control strategy of its own.

“We had a ‘we have to deal with a difficult situation’ strategy. We had to do everything we could to gain control and get the infection down. It was really only at the end of March (2020) that we found the more long-term strategy,” she told the commission.

Low stocks of personal protective equipment were another source of criticism in the report.

“The government knew that it would in all probability be difficult to obtain infection control equipment in the event of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the warehouses were almost empty,” Kvinnsland said at a press conference.

Norwegian health authorities were praised for the swiftness with which they implemented infection control measures. But the commission said that the decision should have been formally made by the government, rather than the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

READ MORE: Norway saw fewer hospital patients in 2020 despite pandemic

The implementation of restrictions in March 2020 was critiqued for failing to ensure that “infection control measures were in line with the constitution and human rights.”

One-fifth of municipalities in Norway lacked a functioning plan in the event of a pandemic according to the report, and the government did not provide enough support to municipalities.

“We believe that government paid too little attention to the municipalities. The municipalities were given much larger tasks than they could have prepared for,” Kvinnsland said.

The report was also critical of Norway’s lack of a plan for dealing with imported infections in autumn 2020.

“The government lacked a plan to deal with imported infections when there was a new wave of infections in Europe in the autumn of 2020,” the report found.

“When the government eased infection control measures towards the summer of 2020, they made many assessments individually. The government did not consider the sum of the reliefs and it had no plan to deal with increasing cross-border infection,” it added.

The report also concluded that Norway allowed itself to be too easily lobbied by business when deciding to ease border restrictions last summer.

The division of roles in handling aspects of the pandemic was scrutinised in the report. Here, the division of responsibilities between the Ministry of Health and Care Services, The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health were unclear.

The prime minister has asked the commission to continue its work.

“We are not done with the pandemic yet. Therefore, it is natural that the commission submits a final report. There will also be topics where the learning points can only be drawn later,” Solberg said.

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