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Español The Minimum Price – Tremonti, why did you do it?
Is it sensible to throw away two billion euro a year, to save 450 million one time only? It would seem so… when the money is not yours.
In 2003, Philip Morris was threatening to take its products away from Etinera, the state company that distributed cigarettes on all the Italian territory. Consequently, Etinera’s sale price to British American Tobacco would have dropped from 600 million euro estimated and recorded in the in the State budget, to a little more than 150, that is, 450 million less. How could they solve this problem?
In the summer of 2003, on the request of Philip Morris, the Minimum Price was introduced by the director of the Monopolies Giorgio Tino, under the direction of Giulio Tremonti, with a decree.
Brussels, that had said that “the Minimum Price safeguards the interests of the manufacturers and their profit margins, sacrificing the revenue of the State”, even started up a legal violation procedure against Italy because our country did not eliminate this perverse system, which also cancelled out all free competition, benefiting Philip Morris.
Here come our heroes!
Following petitions to the TAR (Regional Tribunal) on the illegitimacy of the measure and the incompetence of those who had adopted it, Minister Tremonti legalized the content of the decree inserting it in the 2004 financial budget, probably also due to the pressures of Philip Morris, the principal beneficiary, that needed to protect itself from any possible downward rate competition.
With the introduction of the Minimum Price, the State lost revenues worth 2 billion euro per year… but at least, we did not lose the 450 million with the sale of Etinera!
Etinera was to pass to BAT with the sale of ETI (that included Etinera); then from BAT, in August 2005, it was sold to Altadis, or rather, to the Spanish company Logista, at the time property of Altadis, for 590 million euro.
Affairs among friends
The sale of Etinera to Logista in 2005 was the object of a position taken by Alfiero Grandi, D.S. (center-left), member of Parliament at the time. He declared: “Many doubts exist on BAT’s sale of the Etinera company to Logista, as this prospect was not contemplated in the sale contract of ETI to BAT and it could have, if it had been known at the time, oriented the conclusion of the privatization of ETI in a different direction.”
The “derogation” of the omnipresent Minister Tremonti, who authorized BAT to sell Etinera to the Spanish multinational Logista, had as its objective, as the multinationals of the sector were requesting, to “maintain the unitary nature of the distribution sector and to keep high the corporate value of Etinera”.
In the meantime, Big Tobacco was earning billions thanks to the Minimum Price; it had taken over the Italian market and was evading taxes with total impunity.
We should add that, with the sale and the transformation of Etinera into Logista Italia SpA, a process began of company restructuring with the most classical and brutal ruthlessness: the closure of 250 storage facilities led to the firing of 1,200 workers and the loss of income of the families, all with utter contempt for the rules and workers’ rights.
On May 13th, the TAR - Regional Tribunal of Lazio closed the last chapter: the expected sentence on the abolition of the Minimum Price. Expected, sure,… but in Italy you can never be sure….
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