It therefore seems that Mayor Brugnaro and Councilor Zuin want to try again to put their hands in the pockets of Venetians, Italians and tourists who take the plane at Marco Polo airport, regardless of where they come from or where they are headed.
An incomprehensible choice in the light of common sense as well as the ruling of the Council of State which literally highlighted “also the non-proportionality of the measure and its impact on people (passengers departing from Venice) who could conceivably not be Venetian citizens , nor tourists visiting Venice, but perhaps Venetian citizens who periodically board at Venice airport and who therefore could receive no benefit from the services provided by the Municipality of Venice”.
An even more unjustified choice considering the neighboring Friuli Venezia Giulia region which has even abolished the national tax of €6.50 for those who take a plane from Trieste, thus, as again highlighted by the aforementioned sentence, “introducing the municipal surcharge on boarding fees equal to €2.50, the taxation for those leaving from Venice airport goes from €6.50 to €9, thus becoming the highest in Italy”: a good record for Mayor Brugnaro and his Councilor Zuin!
To such an extent that the Ryanair company, as a consequence of the tax, removed a plane from its base in Venice, thus generating in the first quarter alone, for the Veneto, a loss of GDP of 12.5 million, approximately equal to the amount of additional taxes on boarding fees and the entire year.
I would also like to underline how the ruling of the Council of State, contrary to what has been repeatedly stated by the Mayor and Zuin, has correlated the introduction of the aforementioned tax with the debt assumed by the Municipality for the Bosco dello Sport stadium and gym , where he states that the Municipality has not taken into consideration other forms of revenue in relation to “the taking out of a new debt for the construction, partly with PNRR funds, of an important sports area with stadium and arena or an area intended in particular to the enjoyment of citizenship”.
That is, the Municipality got into debt to create the Sports Forest and now has to pay interest and the debt itself. It would have been much better to let private individuals build this work, as normally happens, by collecting funds rather than spending them.
Instead of continuing to impose taxes of various kinds, I believe that the Municipality should engage in a grand plan for the future of Venice, continuing to insist on the restoration of the Special Law which served to contribute to the protection of the city by recognizing its specificities. Perhaps as done for Rome: in 2010 the then Government established the special territorial body of Rome Capital with particular autonomy, implementing an amendment proposed with the 2001 constitutional law: I believe that Venice would also be entitled to a special statute , perhaps through the establishment of a special territorial body, which we could call “Venezia Serenissima”, with the first task of safeguarding Venetian citizens and therefore the city itself, allowing for example to cut taxes for residents of Venice, perhaps through a fund of equalization that makes the cost of living in Venice comparable with the cost of living on the mainland (and it is not a question of privileges but of EQUALITY), and then many other initiatives such as promoting local shops etc. that could be implemented.
The Mayor should therefore commit himself to trying to bring the resources that the territory has had in the past and to which we are entitled to safeguard Venice, without taxing and damaging the Venetian economy.
A commitment that also involves all our politicians in a vast program because as Bruno Visentini said, “we are all Venetians from the mainland”.
In closing, I remind the Mayor how Luigi Einaudi always underlined the need to “know in order to decide” and I therefore invite him to reflect and inform himself well also on the problems and themes of air transport before proceeding further, because, to quote Saint Augustine , “errare humanum est, perseverare diabolicum”…
*President of the SAVE Group
