PM Giorgia Meloni said today her cabinet approved a two-billion-euro decree with an emergency package for the areas of Emilia-Romagna and Marche. The regions were hit by last week’s devastating floods that claimed 14 lives and caused huge damage to the local economy and infrastructure.
Meloni told a press conference with Emilia-Romagna Governor Stefano Bonaccini that the emergency package offered the “first important answers to the territories affected”.
She said the decree suspends the deadline for tax and social-security-contribution payments in these areas until August 31. Furthermore, she said energy authority ARERA had already suspended payments of utility bills in the affected areas.
She added there was no need for the decree to suspend mortgage payments for those affected. This measure is already covered by a memorandum of understanding with Italian banking association ABI in the case of “calamitous events”.
Self-employed workers to get one-off payment
Meloni also mentioned the package features “a one-off payment of up to €3,000 for self-employed workers forced to stop working”. In total, the PM said, the government had allocated €300million in funding to this measure.
Governor Bonaccini stressed this package needs to be followed by further measures to aid the reconstruction effort.
“We need simplification rules for a reconstruction that is done properly, with full respect but also quickly, to restart a region that is in first place (in Italy) in terms of exports or capita.
“There are billions of euros of damage.
“There are 300 active landslides, entire forests have come down, there is the problem of the rivers, and there is the issue of roads and infrastructure”.
Whole of Italy in solidarity with affected
The whole of Italy has shown great solidarity with Emilia-Romagna, President Sergio Mattarella said today. Speaking as he received players and managers of Fiorentina and Inter at the Quirinale presidential palace on the eve of the Coppa Italia Italian Cup final at the Olimpico in Rome, he said: “There is a need for a remembrance of the victims and a thought for so many of our fellow citizens in distress.
There are thousands who have had to leave their homes, who have seen them devastated by water. So many have suffered the devastation of their businesses.
“There is a great suffering that requires a great commitment of solidarity from the whole of Italy and that is manifesting itself in these days.”
