“We need a law that prevents parliamentarians from receiving money from foreign states”
“It is unacceptable and dangerous that parliamentarians, who have the honor and the burden of representing the Italian people, receive money from foreign states or from entities controlled by them”, so Francesco Berti, Leghorn member of the 5 Star MoVement, explains to affaritaliani.it the rationale of his bill. The proposal has the eloquent title “Provisions regarding the conflict of interests of holders of political offices benefiting from disbursements from foreign states” and provides for the prohibition for members of the Government, parliamentarians, Presidents of the Region and regional councilors to receive sums or benefits of value exceeding 5,000 euros by foreign states (even indirectly). Anyone who does not respect these rules is expected to be ineligible and incompatible for the same offices, for a period of five years.
So Renzi would be out of the Senate
If approved, Berti’s proposal would put Matteo Renzi out of Parliament. In his recent appearances in “Piazzapulita” and “Otto e mezzo”, the founder of Italia Viva defended himself by saying that after years at the helm of the government he had deemed it appropriate to make his current account public on his own 15,000 euros (“If you want to earn money, go to investment banks, you don’t get to be a politician”), while as a Senator he worked without problems as a speaker at conferences abroad, getting richly paid. “I know I have not violated the law”he noted. And Berti wants precisely to fill what is seen as a gap, with a proposal that unites the requirements for members of the Government and Parliament.
“The parliamentarians have to do only the Italian interest”
“The goal is to protect the impartiality of the work of the individual parliamentarian, who must act in the exclusive interest of the nation and the citizens he represents”, continues the 31-year-old M5S deputy. “If today all 945 parliamentarians accepted money or benefits from foreign states for extra-parliamentary activities, whose interests would they then make? Of the Italian citizens who pay them, or of the foreign state that finances them, perhaps to protect divergent interests? We need a clear answer with the introduction of a specific law and I hope that Parliament will approve it soon by a large majority ”.
“Parliamentary diplomacy” and behaviors to avoid
The proposal was presented in Parliament on March 1, 2021, with Berti who did his utmost to distinguish between correct “parliamentary diplomacy” and behaviors to avoid: “The role of functionally representing the national interest abroad is reserved for the Government, in in particular to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and to the diplomatic corps. The so-called ‘parliamentary diplomacy’, that is, the participation of parliamentarians in international forums or parliamentary friendship groups, is a valid tool for creating connections between peoples and their institutions. These instruments of parliamentary diplomacy, however, do not provide for the provision of additional remuneration, neither by the international organization of which the representative is a member, nor by the State with which relations are maintained “. The legislation proposed by Berti on the prohibition of remuneration from foreign states is part of a package of M5S proposals on the theme of transparent politics, together with that on lobbies of which Vittoria Baldino is rapporteur and that on conflict of interest, which instead has as speaker Giuseppe Brescia, president of the Institutional Affairs Commission. We will see if the bitter controversy of recent days on the Renzi case will influence the parliamentary debate. And in what way.
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