Civil Protection amid Disasters and Scandals

On 30 December 2009, the Italian government published Decree Law No. 195, which dealt with the management of two contingencies: toxic waste in the Campania region and recovery from the earthquake of 6 April 2009 in Abruzzo. Article 16 of this legislative instrument was rather different from the other 18 articles, in that it mandated the privatization of civil protection in the form of a holding company entitled Protezione Civile Servizi SpA. The prime minister was named as the only shareholder, and start-up capital of 1 million euros was to be supplied by the public purse. For the preceding six weeks, rumors about this law had been circulating, but the head of the national Department of Civil Protection (DPC) from 1991–2010, Guido Bertolaso, had repeatedly denied that any such action was going to be taken. As Article 14 of this decree law authorized the DPC to appoint an unspecified number of new employees to permanent posts, a large amount of unsupervised hiring took place.