THE STRANGE TALE OF THE GOVERNMENT IN OPPOSITION TO ITSELF, BUT NOT QUITE

Law Decree 19/2024, entitled “Further urgent provisions for the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP)”, is yet another unconstitutional measure – Article 77 permits recourse to a decree only in extraordinary cases of necessity and urgency – in which the government inserts a vast array of disparate provisions, often drafted by cross-referencing other legislative acts in order to render the rules incomprehensible.
In the decree's original text, in Article 43, the government felt the pressing need, in anticipation of possible health emergencies and to facilitate – how generous of them – the issuance and verification of health certifications, to make indefinite use of the national “digital green certificate” platform, in the fractured English so dear to the domestic legislature, which is to say, to extend the notorious green pass indefinitely, leaving it to one or more decrees of the Minister of Health to identify the new certificates that will be indispensable for future pandemics. All of this at the non-negligible cost of €3,850,000 for 2024 and €1,850,000 per year from 2025 onwards. The funding for this unpostponable measure was to be drawn from the fund allocated to compensate victims of vaccinations.
Having realised the immense discontent this measure caused, the government decided to take remedial action, tasking the Minister of “Health”, Professor Schillaci, with a series of bombastic statements conveniently circulated by the press, announcing an amendment that would modify this provision and assuring citizens that the government had no intention whatsoever of signing up to the global green pass. To lend greater theatricality to the farce, WHO Regional Director Hans Kluge intervened to threaten Italy with severe consequences should it make the wicked choice of not adhering to the global green pass so dear to the organisation headed by Mr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a former member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, an Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist party.
On 30 April, Law No. 56/2024 converting the law decree was published in the Official Gazette. The new Article 43 accomplished the Gattopardian legislative miracle of changing everything so that nothing changes. Having removed the references to the notorious green pass and to Law Decree 52/2021, the government adopted a new and sibylline wording: “by decree of the Minister of Health, in agreement with the Minister of Economy and Finance, to be adopted within ninety days of the date of entry into force of the law converting this decree, following consultation with the Data Protection Authority, the appropriate technological procedures shall be identified to ensure the issuance and verification of digital health certifications, in accordance with European and international technical specifications.”
The green pass, thrown out of the front door by Minister Schillaci’s interviews, slips back in through the window under the guise of compliance with European and international technical specifications, so as not to displease Mr Kluge. That this is precisely the same arrangement envisaged under the old wording becomes apparent in the second paragraph. Indeed, the digital health certifications will cost exactly what the sine die extension of the green pass was supposed to cost: €3,850,000 for 2024 and €1,850,000 per year from 2025 onwards.
They did not have the stomach, at least, to confirm the use of the fund for vaccine-injured individuals. The money to fund these useless digital health certifications will come from lapsed liabilities, that is, budgetary liabilities owed by the state that are no longer enforceable and thus to be re-credited to assets.
The text of the old and new Article 43 of Law Decree 19/2024 can be consulted here.
That politicians lie is well known, that they fail to keep promises is common knowledge, but being taken for fools is galling, especially when done by a government that has taken no concrete action to bring to justice those responsible for the ferocious assault on fundamental freedoms perpetrated under the guise of the pandemic from February 2020 onwards. The average Italian is patient and adapts to anything, but being treated like an idiot might just provoke a backlash.
At least, that is what we hope.

Here is the link to the video where we discuss the topic:

https://youtu.be/9hxErrMePUQ