STORY OF A SUCCESSFUL NEAPOLITAN PROFESSIONAL

Professionalism, experience and high specialization in the field of subsidized finance: these are the peculiarities of Nocera Consulting, a highly qualified consultancy company, which in recent years has achieved important objectives in terms of eligibility for the “Rest in the South” call. Raffaele Nocera, founder of this young and dynamic reality, is a well-known chartered accountant and auditor from Naples, as well as a successful young entrepreneur, owner of the Boutique Hotel & Champagnerie il Salotto della Regina, of the B-Factory Restaurant, of prestigious Raphael Paris Bag and backpacks brands; a wonderful Drinkeria Champagnerie on the Naples waterfront named JOLIE ‘will soon open.

by Roberta Imbimbo

Dr. Nocera, can you tell us your story?

After earning a degree and a Masters in Management at the Luigi Bocconi University of Milan, I gained various experiences in prestigious consulting firms, both in Italy and abroad, and in particular in Madrid where I lived for about a year. The boundless love for my land, which gave birth to great artists and entrepreneurs, prompted me soon to return to my hometown, Naples, with a wealth of international experience that made me a visionary entrepreneur , forward-looking and open to the world. After winning the PhD in Economics and Public Administration Regulation, in 2011 I decided to found Nocera Consulting; a young and dynamic company – with offices in Naples, Casoria, Rome and Sofia (Bulgaria) – which in a short time affirmed its leadership in the field of Subsidized Finance, managing to increase its customer base thanks to a highly qualified consultancy service on the whole side of public and private financing to the company.

What is the company’s mission?

A premise appears necessary. In order to increase the competitiveness of the country system, to favor the development of new entrepreneurial activities and to support corporate investments in certain economic sectors, in recent years there has been a proliferation of various subsidized finance instruments and projects, whose sources derive from a rather articulated and complex ad hoc regulatory framework that you need to know perfectly. A regulatory framework that Nocera Consulting has made its own, with the aim of offering the best possible advice on the matter, supporting the companies during all the phases (from the request to the final disbursement of the loan) necessary to obtain and benefit from these concessions , whether they are community, national or regional.

What is the “Rest in the South” call? And why is it also very important in this field to rely on the advice of industry experts?

The Invitalia Call, which aims to incentivize young entrepreneurs not to leave their land, is an incentive that supports the birth of new entrepreneurial activities started by the under 45 in the southern regions with funding of up to 200 thousand euros and with a total initial financial endowment of 1,250 million. The loan covers 100% of the eligible expenses and consists of the non-refundable contribution equal to 35% of the total investment and the bank loan equal to 65% of the total investment, guaranteed by the Guarantee Fund for SMEs. However, the excessive bureaucratization especially of the reporting phase and nonetheless the regulatory complexity can represent an obstacle course for businesses and entrepreneurs; a path that can make access to these incentives difficult and incomprehensible, which instead requires the intervention of specialist and reliable skills, which is not easy to find on the market. Thanks to a competent multidisciplinary team, Nocera Consulting has quickly become the main point of reference in Southern Italy for this type of call. The results achieved testify, in fact, the goodness of his work: dozens and dozens of positive resolutions accepted have allowed many young people to start important business activities for the future of Southern Italy, betting on the socio-economic redemption of these territories.

Changing the subject, do you think the government was adequately close to Italian entrepreneurs during this unprecedented health emergency in history?

Even before the outbreak of this emergency, I was quite skeptical about the excessively welfare policy adopted by the government, which feeds unemployment and does not adequately reward entrepreneurs! Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics in 1976, says that “if you pay people when they don’t work and you rate them when they work, you shouldn’t be surprised if you produce unemployment and not employment.” In this perspective, we should try to imagine a different, generative welfare where

Professionalism, experience and reliability: these are the hallmarks of the Salerno Law Firm for over 20 years highly specialized in providing advice and assistance to managers, teachers, ATA staff and to all those involved, in any capacity, in education disputes. Since 2000 Antonio Salerno, a brilliant lawyer from Salerno, has in fact begun to deal with the litigation of the “world” of the School, where over time, extending and expanding his skills to further legal and civil law aspects, he has focused his attention professional sponsoring and representing the interests of its clients throughout the national territory, offering qualified assistance even in higher jurisdictions.

Avv. Salerno, tell us your story. How did your passion for this profession come about?

I am a son of 1970, born in Salerno, and before the Advocacy my great passion was sporting activity which played a decisive role in the formation of my personality, since it helped me develop and refine numerous qualities. Above all, the ability to face and overcome difficulties, the attitude to collaborate and “team up” with others, the awareness of one’s skills and a winning mindset. I was an athlete of national interest of the Italian Fencing Federation and this discipline has given me enormous and unforgettable satisfactions. Among others, I graduated Italian individual champion in the Under 20 Sword in 1987 in Foggia, I climbed several times on the podium in national events (the most important remains a Bronze Medal won by the Team Absolute Tricolors) and twice I was among the players called up for the World Junior Championships. For two years I competed under the colors of the sports group Fiamme Oro of the State Police and for several seasons I was instructor of numerous athletes. Sports passion, which has been an important training ground for me, has always gone hand in hand with my professional vocation, which brought me closer to the world of law from a very young age. With one goal: to be a good lawyer, a mission that requires commitment, perseverance and above all passion. In order to better defend the rights of each client, it is in fact important to know how to manage one’s work as a real life philosophy, a mission to carry on with heart, commitment and dedication in any legal advice. And that’s what I’ve been doing for over 20 years now!

You have always had an exquisitely administrative training, taking care, before the competent regional TAR or the Council of State, of the most disparate matters pertaining to the administrative judge. Then, in the continuation of his training, he decided to devote himself specifically to the school world. Because?

For a series of crossings, over time I have preferred to sectorise my work, becoming an important national reference point as regards the disputes in the school world, which have increased dramatically in recent years. However, a premise appears necessary. With the notorious Law 107, the Renzi government intended to carry out a significant reform in the great universe of the school: it was a real revolution – a new approach to the way of seeing the world of education which, however, has generated many disagreements – aimed at giving a clear turn to school precariousness thanks to the recruitment of “fresh” teachers ready to meet the needs of the school of the future. Already previously, the European Court of Justice had substantially censored the Italian administration’s work for abuse of recourse to fixed-term contracts beyond a certain period of time (the famous 36 months), thus violating the rights of school workers. The so-called law of the Good School of Renzi, therefore, was born precisely from the need to block as many precarious historians as possible (about 55 thousand) in order to comply with the judgment of the judges of Strasbourg.

What was the 2018 maxi-appeal you sponsored?

Immediately after the 2015 Law, the State began to ban sequential bankruptcy procedures, committing, in my opinion, a serious evaluation error since today there is a very large category of teachers who are still placed in the notorious Exhaustion Rankings (GAE) , from which the state could draw highly qualified personnel, instead of annually announcing bankruptcy procedures. Among these, the one of 2018 stands out, a so-called Competition Pure Simplified, reserved only for teachers qualified for teaching and / or specialized in support, against which there have been a myriad of appeals mostly by non-qualified graduates and ITP teachers. Personally, I represented about six thousand people, before the TAR and the Council of State, who claimed the right to participate in this simplified competition, to then be able to access the world of school. What we questioned was the exclusivity of the procedure which, as such, violates the concept of public competition (specifically, articles 3, 51 and 97, last paragraph of the Constitution, would be violated). Our recursive action was unfortunately nipped: the Constitutional Court intervened on this point, which declared legitimate the mechanism for recruiting personnel reserved exclusively for only one category (teachers qualified for the profession!), As it is linked to extraordinary needs , such as that of consolidating specific professional skills already operational within the Administration itself.

An appeal that had a different outcome was that of recruiting “discontinuous” Firefighters. Can you tell us about it?

Yes, on that occasion the Council of State accepted the appeal promoted by my Firm by ordering the admission of my client to the competition aimed at the defined stabilization of the “discontinuous” Firefighters, that is, of those voluntary policemen who should intervene only in cases of absolute exceptionality, exceptionality that has become the practice. Discontinuities have in fact become permanently incorporated subjects, who receive a paycheck with the same duties as the vigilant regulations hired. And so, the College shared the complaints promoted by my Firm with the specific aim of highlighting on the one hand the perpetrated abuse of the category of “discontinuous” and on the other the unreasonableness of a selection competition based on different physical fitness parameters and more stringent (DM 78/2008) than those (DM 05.02.2020) used for discontinuous, specious and illegitimate activities.

Projects?

Many, such as the opening of new offices, the prompt choice of the high number of disputes and customers distributed throughout the Peninsula and new approaches to the world of law with a scientific method.

THE COST OF WORK IN ITALY

Labor, which plays a very important role in the functioning of the global economy, represents a cost for companies which includes not only the wages paid to workers, but also the social contributions paid by the employer, the accruals of thirteenth and fourteenth monthly and severance pay and any other amount related to the job. It is therefore one of the main determining factors of the competitiveness of companies, however also influenced by the entrepreneurial spirit, labor productivity, innovation and the positioning of the company brand on the market. In Italy, labor costs are one of the most expensive in Europe and the size of the tax wedge remains a strong obstacle to the growth and competitiveness of businesses, to the development of investments and to the expansion of employment. “For these reasons, taxation at work must be reduced, starting with the component attributable to employees: with heavier pay slips, in fact, it is possible to reactivate household consumption considerably and boost economic growth”, Sergio di Meo emphasizes emphatically. well-known accountant from Aversa, particularly qualified in employment and legal consultancy for Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

by Roberta Imbimbo

Dr. Di Meo, what is the situation of labor costs in Italy today?

The cost of labor in Italy is among the highest in Europe. For Italian companies, in fact, this item erodes a large part of disposable income, much more than it does in large European economies, such as Germany, France, and Spain. As noted by Eurostat, in our country, the incidence of non-wage costs – i.e. social contributions paid by employers – is equal to 27.5% of the total labor cost. This makes Italy less competitive than other countries. In the United Kingdom and France, for example, the sum between contributions paid by the worker and the company is similar, but the tax levy is decidedly lower and wages are undoubtedly higher: consequently there is a greater propensity to consume and save . The comparison with Spain sees a similar income tax, but a lower impact of the cost component related to contributions. Only in Italy, therefore, is there a very wide distance between income received by the worker and costs incurred by the employer, which penalizes both consumption and the competitiveness of the companies themselves. It is no coincidence that in the last ten years, it has always been the last among industrialized countries: the high cost of labor for Italian companies, in addition to representing an important brake on employment, often becomes an incentive for undeclared work.

What can be done concretely to reduce labor costs?

In my opinion, an adequate development policy is urgently needed to relaunch the competitiveness of Italian companies; an ad hoc law for the South, which provides tax breaks and relief for new hires (and not only for young people, women and over 50, as required by current legal provisions). With the entry into force of the Law of 2 May 1976, n 183, which provided for ten-year tax breaks for companies in the South that employed employees, there was a huge boom in hiring, with a consequent considerable tax impact for the State and a drastic reduction of undeclared work. The last law that favored Italian companies (and which led to strong employment growth) was undoubtedly the n. 407/90 which, in art. 8 paragraph 9, provided for special tax breaks for a period of 36 months in favor of employers who hired workers with an open-ended contract (also part-time) for at least 24 months. The repeal of this law severely penalized the South, where employers were able to access a 100% contribution relief from the date of hiring. To restore vigor to growth and jobs, the government needs to act on factors that inhibit hiring workers and improve the economic environment in which national companies operate.

To improve this context, it is also necessary to combat undeclared work. Budget law 2019 provided for a tightening of sanctions, right?

Exactly. The high labor costs in Italy lead many companies not to regularize their employees. However, this practice can be very risky both for the safety of workers and for the very heavy penalties that could be incurred. In this regard, art.1 paragraph 445 of the Budget Law 2019 n.145 has tightened the sanctioning system by increasing all the sanctions by 20%, thus bringing the maximunition on illegal work to € 1,800.00 for each worker not in compliance with the companies.

The negative consequences of undeclared work are in fact not only linked to the non-tax revenue for the state coffers, but also to the deleterious effects that affect the healthy system of the companies that produce respecting the rules. In fact, the many artisan and commercial companies that suffer from unfair competition from entrepreneurs who do not scruple to use irregular workers lose out. The latter, in fact, since they are not subject to social security, insurance and tax contributions, allow companies where they serve, to benefit from a much lower labor cost and, consequently, to practice a much lower final price of the product or service. compared to those who comply with the provisions of the law.

Doctor, changing the subject, the current Coronavirus emergency requires a reflection on social safety nets, which never as at this time become even more indispensable in order not to let millions of people fall into economic anguish, in addition to health. Are you of this opinion?

A premise appears necessary. Among the support measures for companies and workers contained in the decree-law 18/2020, called the Cura Italia decree, there is the possibility of accessing, with a simplified procedure, the ordinary layoffs, the FIS and the exemption layoffs. The problem of AA.SS. in Italy it is linked to bureaucracy and the authorization mechanism by the INPS which provides times ranging between 50/60 days for the delivery of the treatment; times that severely penalize both companies and workers especially in this historical period where, with companies closed, workers find themselves without any form of income. A typically Italian paradox if you think that these measures have been launched precisely to meet families in difficulty!

The advantages of consensual separation

Spouses who intend to suspend or terminate the civil effects of marriage can opt for a consensual or judicial procedure. In the first case, they can agree on all matters relating to property, the maintenance of the weakest spouse and offspring, as well as the assignment of the marital home. Once the agreement has been reached, the spouses can appear before the Court in order to obtain the approval of what has been agreed. In the case of a judicial procedure, however, a real dispute similar to the ordinary process will open, at the end of which the Judge will issue the separation or divorce judgment. The lawyer intervenes on the subject Francesca Coppola, family law consultant.

by Roberta Imbimbo

Coppola lawyer, why should we reach an agreement and avoid the trial?

Because it is the form of legal separation certainly preferable not only for the imaginable minor conflict that normally arises between the spouses – however with significant positive effects also on the management of the relationship with any children – but also because it presents procedural forms definitely slimmer and faster. In 1973 Paul Bohannan elaborated six dimensions that involve the couple in the moment of separation or divorce: among these, the most influential ones are certainly the so-called “Emotional divorce” or the dissolution of the life project together and the frustration that follows, and the “economic divorce” understood as a change in social status capable of creating conditions of economic hardship. Considering both aspects, it is of fundamental importance to strive for a consensual termination of the marital relationship in order to avoid further exacerbating an already seriously compromised relationship, dragging the spouse into a dispute that can last even several years.

What are the economic benefits associated with this procedure?

As regards the transfer of real estate and movable property registered between the spouses, it is possible to take advantage of tax breaks if the transfer is expressly indicated in the consensual separation agreement. Indeed, once the homologation has been obtained by the Court, the spouses can present it to the Notary and proceed with the transfer of ownership; the only cost to be paid will be the notary’s fee. In the event of separation and judicial divorce, however, the unsuccessful party is ordered to pay all the court costs. More. Opting for a consensual procedure allows you to speed up the time and proceed with the divorce only six months after granting the approval of the separation. In the case of judicial separation, however, the time to obtain a divorce is extended to 1 year from the first Presidential hearing. Furthermore, for the closure of the process and therefore for the issuance of the separation sentence, there will be a waiting time of about 3 years, although fortunately by virtue of Law no. 55/2015 the dissolution of the legal community and the authorization to live separately take place already in the first Presidential hearing and no longer with a final judgment.

For more info: www.studiolegalecoppola.org