Dismantling civil society

The Agency for the Third Sector has been shut down. Is this the end of Italian civil society?

di Staff

Until recently Stefano Zamagni, former dean of the faculty of Economics at the University of Bologna and vice director of the Johns Hopkins Bologna Centre, was also the President of Italy’s Agency for the Third Sector. But as of February 24, the Agency is no longer, its mandate passed over to the Ministry for Labour and Social Affairs in an attempt to cut costs.

Understandably neither Zamagni nor the Italian third sector is pleased with the developments. “The message the government is sending out is that non governmental organisations are not part of Italy’s economic jumpstart plan. That they are not needed. But this is a big mistake because the third sector is a source of economic growth, not just for the approximately one million people it employs but also because it produces social cohesion”, explains Zamagni in an interview to Italy’s leading Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana.

If the figures are anything to go by it looks like Italy’s non profit sector is going to be seeing more hard times ahead. At the end of 2011 postal tariffs went up by 400 per cent; development cooperation was taxed an extra 3 per cent and its funds cut from 732 million euros to just 86. As if that weren’t enough the announcement was made that the 5 per thousand fund, a vital source of finance for thousands of associations and NGOs, would not be transferred for the third time in three years.  Even traditional social services did not escape the chopping block: funds allocated to infancy, disability and national volunteering services were cut by 63 per cent. The news in January that the Agency would be closed down was the sour cherry on a cake with very few slices left. 

“This government”, concluded Zamagni in his interview, “believes that Italy can sort its problems out through market and government mechanisms alone: an efficient market (to be achieved through liberalisation and privatisation) and a State cleansed from corruption and waste. Unfortunately their vision is unfounded.”

“The government doesn’t understand what the Third Sector is nor does it understand what civil society is. It doesn’t understand the importance of the Italian welfare model or subsidiarity. This government wants people to believe that it has the courage to look everyone in the eye and cut away, like a surgeon who cuts even that which doesn’t need to be. But there is more. This government is hedging its bets on insurance companies, enterprises and banks, which is fine as long as it doesn’t mean destroying all that lies between the market and the State”.


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