BRITISH IN ITALY

As you may already be aware I am now a part of the group called 'British in Italy' which has been set up to protect and fight for the rights of Italian citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living in the EU.   

 

As we move further through the BREXIT process no doubt more information will come to light regarding the protection that the UK and EU will grant us in these negotiations.  

Our message is simple:  

We should be granted all the rights that we have acquired and/or are entitled to before the UK chose to leave the EU. 

I would ask you to get behind this movement and help us to fight for you in the UK and in Italy, in our discussions at the UK Embassy and also in our meetings with Italian MPs. It is very important that we are seen to be representing a large number of UK Nationals living in Italy. Numbers hold a lot of credibility for us. 

In 2015 ISTAT (the Italian statistics agency) recorded approximately 27000 UK Nationals registered in Italy. We are in touch with about 1000.  We have a long way to go! 

If you have not yet made your presence known, and/or you know someone who hasn't then feel free to get in touch with the British in Italy group at britsinitaly@gmail.com  Your name and contact information will be registered and you will be added to a newsletter mailing list. (Your information will not be shared or used for corporate purposes).

 Or follow us on Facebook HERE

 Our objectives are listed below: 

 • British in Italy is a group of UK citizens resident in Italy concerned about the effect of Brexit on the many thousands of UK citizens in Italy and the half million or so Italians in the UK. 

• Our aim is to ensure that Brexit does not penalise these individuals, all of whom made the decision to move across the Channel in bona fide and relying on their EU right of freedom of movement. 

 
• UK citizens already in Italy and Italians already in the UK should therefore continue to have all the rights they had acquired or were in the process of acquiring while the UK was in the EU. 

• We have already lobbied the UK government hard not to take these rights away from EU citizens in the UK. 

• We now call upon the Italian government, both as a national government and as a founding member of the EU, to ensure that in the negotiations over Brexit these rights are not taken away from expatriate citizens on either side of the Channel.

Remember to get in touch at britsinitaly@gmail.com

_________________________________________________________

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

 

Do you relish the day when you could jump in an ecologically clean car and drive many miles without wondering how many pollutants you are emitting.  

This comes to mind, every day, when I am taking my son to school on the bicycle and am sitting behind buses, motorini and cars, in Rome, spewing out toxic fumes.  

The infrastructure in Rome, and elsewhere in Italy, is dreadfully lacking and eons behind other advanced nations.  As with everything else in Italy it all seems to go so much slower. 

However, did you know that electric vehicles (EVs) deliver impressive energy efficiency, converting 60% of electrical energy to power at the wheels, compared with a 20% conversion rate for internal combustion engines. Many governments are starting to incentivise both manufacturers and buyers towards EVs in an attempt to reduce pollution. 

The Chinese government is heavily subsidising EVs having announced this as an industry of national importance, and is targeting a 10-fold increase in the number of EVs sold, to 3 million per year, by 2025. In London, EVs are exempt from the Congestion Charge, reducing the cost of ownership. The Netherlands, Paris, Madrid, Athens and Mexico City have pledged to ban diesel vehicles from their city centres from 2025. 

Car manufacturers have also announced bold targets: BMW is targeting 100,000 EV sales next year and Nissan estimates 20% of its European vehicle sales in 2020 will be electric (currently 6%).

So, maybe the future is brighter after all. Whilst Brexit and Donald Trump make all the headlines, new technology will make the world a healthier place to live and create some new and exciting investment opportunities in the meantime.