"Revoke the strike, it will only harm the citizens".
Adolfo Urso's appeal is addressed to petrol station attendants who will close their petrol pumps on 25 and 26 January, also in self-service mode.
But given the response from the main trade associations, it seems like an appeal destined to fall on deaf ears: "The stop was and is confirmed and the minister's statements are yet another demonstration of the confusion in which the Government moves in this matter", they reply with a joint note the presidents of Faib, Fegica and Figisc/Anisa, asking for the direct intervention of Palazzo Chigi.
A question and answer that therefore risks closing even the last glimmer of dialogue and, the managers underline, "closing any remaining possibility of positively concluding the ongoing dispute".
While consumers take the side of the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, and in turn threaten a 'counter-strike' by motorists throughout the country if the lockout is not lifted.
The initiatives that are being worked on and on which it is hoped that all the associations will be involved, Assoutenti explain, will aim to convince as many people as possible not to use petrol for two-three days.
Or to fill up only at the most convenient self-service stations, or to pay the gas station with the POS method and not with cash.
After the last meeting last week at his ministry, which ended in stalemate,
"There is a discussion table that we will keep open on an ongoing basis until there is a reorganization of the sector", assured the minister, reiterating that there is no intention on the part of the executive to penalize or, even worse, blame the category of petrol stations.
Urso then spoke of "gray areas that harm those who work in complete honesty", that is to say the vast majority of managers.
But the latter didn't like the explanation that the minister once again gave to motivate the rules that they say penalize them, such as the obligation for each distributor to display a sign with the average regional prices, under penalty of being sanctioned.
"The display of the billboard will help consumers to choose", as well as the
"It was a precise choice of the government. The reduction of excise duties underlined Urso - it was made in an extraordinary moment and in time, but it brought benefits above all to the better-off. Instead, we decided to allocate the resources available for the less well-off, to businesses and families, especially the more numerous ones. In times of crisis, the weakest are helped".
"The government continues to ask for transparency - the trade associations reply - and we have offered it in every way. What one cannot ask is to authorize new obligations and new penalties for managers. This is not the case. To the minister we have put forward concrete proposals, you value them without discharging the responsibility of your exclusive choices on the skin of the gas station attendants".
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