The government introduces personalised number plates; in Catania, the fine will be issued to SUCA

At the traffic lights on Via Etnea in Catania, a Panda from Palermo with the registration SUCA will one day pull up alongside a Cinquecento from Catania with the registration SUCUNI, and for the first time in the history of motoring, two cars will have something to say to each other even before their drivers do. This has been made possible by the Budget Bill approved yesterday by the Council of Ministers – twenty-six billion in income tax, parental leave, vehicle tax and contributions sought from banks and insurance companies – amidst which Giorgia Meloni slipped in the personalised number plate. “A touch of colour, you might say,” the Prime Minister called it at a press conference, before adding: “I’m sure it will spark the imagination of Italians.” The cost will be six hundred euros: five hundred to the State Printing Office and one hundred to the Ministry of Transport. Ever since Quintino Sella’s days, the state has always collected revenue from what Italians eat, earn, own and leave to their heirs – never from what they imagine. One has to admit there is a touch of genius in it. 

There is something almost sublime about treating national creativity—the peninsula’s only resource that has never run dry—as a mining concession to be leased out by the letter on a number plate. The imagination will run wild, and how. And the state will rake it in. There will be ‘CAZZIMMA’ in Naples, alongside a few invocations to Saint Januarius serving as good luck charms, ‘ANVEDI’ and ‘SCIALLA’ on the Grande Raccordo Anulare, ‘BELIN’ on Corso Italia in Genoa, and in Milan – where people only personalise what pays off – ‘FATTURA’ will appear. In the Montecitorio car park, one might spot ‘ATREJU’, while PD MPs debate among three national factions whether to opt for an identity-based number plate or a standard one, only to end up retaining the alphanumeric version assigned by the Motor Vehicle Registration Authority (pending the party conference). Roberto Vannacci, general and MEP, will request ‘X MAS’, claiming it refers to Christmas, and the ministry official tasked with assessing the appropriateness of the characters will discover he has inherited the delicate task that once fell to the film censorship board.

Then there is a clause that turns vanity into a novel. The number plate remains linked to the vehicle and not to the owner, so the second-hand market will become a market for second-hand emotions, and a notary from Varese, having bought a Golf at a bargain price, will find himself driving through the town centre with the inscription ‘TVB GIUSY’, a paying witness to someone else’s love, which may well have ended precisely with the sale of the car. “This isn’t a move against anyone,” Meloni clarified yesterday, having asked banks and insurance companies to lend a hand. When it comes to number plates, Italians will lend a hand of their own accord. The people who, to evade tax, invented the flat-rate scheme, the black economy, the accountant brother-in-law and the residence in Monte Carlo, will queue at the counter to pay – provided the number plate is personalised. Of the entire Budget Bill – rest assured – this will be the only measure that no one will contest, because vanity and imagination are the only forms of income that no one would dream of hiding. There remains just one scheduling detail. The option to choose one’s own number plate has been provided for in the Highway Code since 2002, and in twenty-four years no one had ever put it into practice. Once again, the ACI warns, the timeline will depend on the implementing regulations. Italians’ imaginations can therefore run wild at their leisure. But when the number plate finally arrives, the speed camera on the Catania Ring Road will be able to send the fine directly to SUCA, and it will be the first time the state has addressed a Sicilian with the very same word that Sicilians, for generations, have reserved for the state when it sends them fines.