Maurizio Landini Carlo Calenda John Elkann
The senator, father of the Industry 4.0 reform, accuses governments of having bowed first to FCA and then to Stellantis under the constant blackmail of the Elkanns to move production elsewhere
Carlo Calenda fires at zero against the Elkann galaxy, or Stellantis and the Gedi group. The senator leader of Action, in fact, gives a bombshell interview to the Corriere starting from Marelli’s latest events. The Crevalcore plant, once owned by Exor before being sold to KKR as well as the entire historic component brand, will be closed “due to the electric car”. Or at least, that’s the popular belief. Except unlike other occasions, second Calendar the union did not intervene properly. And he didn’t do it, again according to the senator of Action, because he is somehow under the thumb of John Elkann who edits Repubblica, now the only voice of the pro-union left in Italy. More: “the Bolognese CGIL sent a circular in which it invited all members to present themselves at the gates to defend the union, that is, Landini, from Calenda. Stuff from 1950s Stalinism. Thirty from Fiom showed up. When I arrived they made this show of leaving but then on social media I received dozens of messages from Marelli workers who weren’t there because it was Saturday and the company was closed. The workers know very well that nothing has been done to defend them.”
In short, a frontal attack that proceeds when, from Marelli, we move on to the crisis of the entire automotive sector. “In the French factories – insists Calenda – 1 million cars are produced compared to the 400 thousand produced in Italy. So what is happening is that Landini, who was waging total war on Marchionne when one million commercial vehicles and cars were produced in Italy, today when we produce 650 thousand (i.e. 30 percent less), is silent because John Elkann has made the move to buy the largest national newspaper of the Italian left”.
The senator, father of the Industry 4.0 reform, accuses governments of having bowed first to FCA and then to Stellantis under the constant blackmail of the Elkanns to move production elsewhere. Here, however, there is a theme that explodes powerfully: in the shareholder structure of Stellantis the second partner is the French State which exercises constant and heavy control and does not disdain a little too much interference. Macron and his colleagues, in fact, have always shown that the economy is free as long as it is doing well in Paris. And in Fincantieri they still remember him with terror after the disaster at the Saint Lazare shipyards. Italy has no instruments of persuasion because it has stopped asserting itself for years. Yet it would have been enough to remind Stellantis that if Fiat still exists it is because at the end of the 1990s the tool of scrapping incentives was invented to reinvigorate a collapsing giant (if you allow a pun). No one raised their hand and asked Elkann “where are you going?” when the registered office moved to the Netherlands.
Now with the agreement of Mirafiori where electric cars like the 500 will be produced, a small part of production is maintained in Italy. The head of Stellantis, however, remains totally French, proof of this is the composition of the board of directors with a transalpine majority, the CEO Carlos Tavares of French origin and, as mentioned, the weight of the French state.
When Calenda says that the union is under the thumb of the Elkann it tells a truth because it reminds us how we have always tried to have an open dialogue with Fiat/Fca/Stellantis. However, the senator is wrong when he says that the definitive automotive crisis has begun. The Mirafiori agreement is great news and allows the country to look to the future with a little more optimism. However, he feels sorry for Marelli, a historic brand that emerged from the Exor galaxy and is now forced to abandon a factory with all that entails. The green transition of the automotive sector was conducted without thinking about the costs for producers both in economic terms and in human resources. And forgetting that an electric car today, if not adequately incentivized, has a prohibitive cost for many Italians.
Final gloss: out of 5,000 euros of state incentives only 1,000 remain in Italy, the other 4,000 become the prerogative of foreign producers who have no interests in our territory. The market economy is fine, but this is exaggerated.
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