Fiat voluntas sua…

Strange how some ancient quotations take on different meanings today: the current events lead us to translate: let Fiat’s will be done … and that’s that.

Every time the National Car Manufacturer seems to be on the brink of bankruptcy, everybody runs to its deathbed with every type of medicine. Facilitated public financing, redundancy funds, scrap-scheme incentives, ad personam ecological incentives, etc. Sure, they are all meritorious things. In the general interest of protecting 200,000 jobs, certainly. Government funding for the biggest national industry, without saying it outright, sure. Now, injections and drips that we have all paid for seem finally to have had some effect: the National Car Manufacturer even goes shopping in America and let’s hope that someday it does not ask the Italian Government for aid for the US workers. It changes its top management and an heir of the Agnelli family returns to the saddle, while it decides that it does not need incentives to have a free hand with the workers of its establishments.

But why does it also decide that no-one else in the car industry should receive incentives? In a democratic and civil country the healing of an important patient must not cost the lives of thousands of poorer patients because, let’s speak frankly, that’s how things went: “no incentives and I close down Termini Imerese, but I will save Pomigliano and Lingotto” and then: “no incentives for me and no incentives for the others, including workshops, otherwise everyone keeps their old car…”.

And so it was, the statements of the man in the sweater were clear: Fiat voluntas sua.

Now, it is of little importance if currently some tens of thousands of workshops, if not the entire LPG sector is in difficulty. The new incentives decree has, probably, made a few dealers happy, some citizen must have fooled himself – raise your hand that, in going to buy a new kitchen has extorted, without difficulty, a 10% discount – but hasn’t changed anything.

We hope that one of the many amendments presented will be approved (follow the news on www.ecomobile.it ).

Let’s see what the National Car Manufacturer requests for the next semester seeing that a catastrophic trend in the orders is taking shape. Let’s hope that it still needs incentives. Fiat voluntas sua, as always.

Ugo Nazzarro