Text tabled : A6-0306/2006

  Carlo Fatuzzo (PPE-DE). – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am used to seeing MEPs leave the Chamber when I begin to speak. I would like to thank those of you who have stayed to listen to this important statement on the report on the establishment of the Fundamental Rights Agency.

I have voted for referral back to committee, but I would like to say on this subject that fundamental rights include that of pensioners to collect a pension. The socialist-communist government, currently in power in Italy and led by President Prodi, is cutting the pensions of 500 000 Italian citizens who have worked abroad, in Switzerland, by two thirds of the sum that they are currently receiving. It is as if we were to receive an allowance of one third of that received up to now.

This is no way to treat pensioners, who have the right to live and to be able to count on a secure pension. What security have those who have found, at the beginning of the year, that their pension has been cut by a whole 66%? Shame on the Prodi centre-left government in Italy.