Recently the Draghi government had to apply the special powers of the golden power to block the sale abroad of our local entrepreneurial jewels.
The DL n.21 / 2012 marks the transition from a regime of golden share to a system of golden power. It allows the exercise of special powers with regard to all companies that carry out activities of strategic importance and no longer only towards privatized companies.
The Italian government has therefore decided to take a hard line against Beijing. The beginning of the Chinese assault took place with the Alpi Aviation, the Friulian company that produced military drones. Continued this year and confirmed yesterday with the stop to the transfer of technology outside our country of Robox, a company that deals with the design and production of electronic equipment, programming languages, robotics development environments.
The company was already 40 percent owned by Efort Intelligent Equipment, a Chinese group very close to the Beijing government.
Efort has now risen to 49 per cent in the corporate package and at the same time it had foreseen an investment of about one million euros to access the source codes and some Robox.
To prevent Beijing from getting its hands on high-quality Italian technology, the Draghi government has, in time, used the special powers provided by the golden power.
In 2021, the requests for change of ownership of our companies, writes Repubblica, were just under 500 against 342 in 2020 and just 83 in 2019. The application of the golden power occurred against Chinese buyers with Alpi Aviation that in this way, as reported by the Guardia di Finanza, they had thought of using a shell company to allow Chinese state-owned companies to take over some of our strategic companies.
The government then intervened in blocking the passage of shares of the Applied Materials Italy, a company that 14 years ago took over the Baccini Spa, of San Biagio di Callalta (Treviso), specialized in photovoltaics and which was about to be purchased by the Chinese Zhejiang Jingsheng Mechanic. The passage of the Lpe, historic Milanese factory that produces chips, at Shenzhen investment holding.
While more recent is the stop - confirmed by the Tar - on the sale of the majority of the shares of Verisem, the small Italian multinational of seeds and vegetables, a Syngenta, Swiss giant bought in 2020 by the Chinese.
Golden Power
With the aim of safeguarding the ownership structures of companies operating in sectors deemed strategic and of national interest, the legislator has organically rewritten, with the decree-law 15 March 2012, n. 21, the matter of the special powers exercisable by the Government, also for the purpose of adhering to the indications and complaints raised at European level.
By means of the decree-law n. 21 of 2012, the objective and subjective scope, type, conditions and procedures for the exercise by the State (in particular, the Government) of the aforementioned special powers. In particular, these are powers that can be exercised in the sectors of defense and national security, as well as certain areas of activity defined as being of strategic importance in theenergy, of the transport and communications.
special powers (golden power) this includes, among others, the right to dictate specific conditions for the acquisition of shareholdings, to veto the adoption of certain corporate resolutions and to oppose the purchase of shareholdings. The aim of the provision is to make the national regulation of the special powers of the Government compatible with European law, which is linked to the institutions of the "Golden share" and "action spécifique " - provided for respectively in the English and French legal systems - and which in the past had already been the subject of complaints raised by the European Commission and a sentence of condemnation by the EU Court of Justice.