Giorgio Fidenato

Giorgio Fidenato
Personal Details
Occupation:	Farmer. Co-founder and Coordinator of the Movimento Libertario. Secretary of Futuragra. President of Italian Federated Farmers.

Giorgio Fidenato (born Mereto di Tomba (Udine), 7 March 1961) is an Italian libertarian farmer, co-founder and coordinator of the Movimento Libertario and secretary of Futuragra a cultural association of Pordenone for technological innovation, business culture, defense of private property and free markets in agriculture.

He is also president of Italian Federated Farmers.

The role in the Movimento Libertario

Giorgio Fidenato with Leonardo Facco and Marcello Mazzilli have founded officially the Movimento Libertario as an Italian libertarian political subject in September 2007, in order to defend life, liberty and property of each individual within a strong liberist system of free market, against any kind of aggression and/or coercion .

Actually he is a coordinator of the Association.

The electoral campaign in Arba

Giorgio Fidenato is residing in the town of Arba in the Province of Pordenone.

Candidate for mayor of Arba in 2009 with its own civic list (Par il nostri pais), and supported by the Movimento Libertario at the local elections, he was an opposition municipal councilor after having attained 11% (96 votes) at the municipal election till on June 2009, when he resigned for personal commitments .

Against the withholding tax

In January 2009, Fidenato began paying his six employees the entire gross sum of their wage without paying taxes and contributions on their behalf.

The taxes, if the workers want to pay them, will have to paid by the worker directly.

Fidenato believe that the Italian Constitution prevents anyone from being forced to work for free for the State, and to paying the taxes on behalf of others is a burden.

"We believe that to not work for free for the state is a "natural" right, that no sovereign and no absolute majority in parliament can deny us."

Denouncing himself, at the Tax Office of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance and to the National Institute of Social Security (INPS), Fidenato began a legal battle against the withholding tax with a mix of civil disobedience and Tax resistance.

His case is very similar to the American case of Vivien Kellems of 1948, that she has described herself in her book Toil, Taxes and Trouble.

The Kellems case is presented also by Murray Newton Rothbard in his book For a New Liberty:

The withholding feature of the income tax is a still more clear-cut instance of involuntary servitude. For as the intrepid Connecticut industrialist Vivien Kellems argued years ago, the employer is forced to expend time, labor, and money in the business of deducting and transmitting his employees' taxes to the federal and state governments — yet the employer is not recompensed for this expenditure. What moral principle justifies the government's forcing employers to act as its unpaid tax collectors? The withholding principle, of course, is the linchpin of the whole federal income tax system. Without the steady and relatively painless process of deducting the tax from the worker's paycheck, the government could never hope to raise the high levels of tax from the workers in one lump sum. Few people remember that the withholding system was only instituted during World War II and was supposed to be a wartime expedient. Like so many other features of State despotism, however, the wartime emergency measure soon became a hallowed part of the American system. It is perhaps significant that the federal government, challenged by Vivien Kellems to test the constitutionality of the withholding system, failed to take up the challenge. In February 1948 Miss Kellems, a small manufacturer in Westport, Connecticut, announced that she was defying the withholding law and was refusing to deduct the tax from her employees. She demanded that the federal government indict her, so that the courts would be able to rule on the constitutionality of the withholding system. The government refused to do so, but instead seized the amount due from her bank account. Miss Kellems then sued in federal court for the government to return her funds. When the suit finally came to trial in February 1951, the jury ordered the government to refund her money. But the test of constitutionality never came.

The Fidenato case has been reported in Italian newspapers including Corriere della Sera , Il Giornale and radio broadcasts of national importance including Radio24 and Radio Radicale.

Supported by the Movimento Libertario, he has received support by the Italian Radicals of Marco Pannella and others association in the battle over the withholding tax.

Fidenato, as representative of the Movimento Libertario, was invited to discuss his case at the national conference of the Italian Radicals in Chianciano Terme (in Province of Siena) in November 2009.

On 28 January 2010, the second and decisive hearing was held in the Labor Court of Pordenone.

On 6 March 2010, Giorgio Fidenato was invited together the Movimento Libertario to discuss about witholding tax at the presentation in Rome of | Confcontribuenti (Confederation of Italian taxpayers).

In this context, he received supports from Confcontribuenti members for the day of the verdict of the court.

The sentence will be pronounced by the court on 1 April 2010 in Pordenone, when the judge will decide if the appeal of Fidenato to raise the issue of constitutionality of the withholding tax has a legal basis, in order to bring the question before the Italian Constitutional Court.

The right to sow GM maize

In the second half of 2006, Giorgio Fidenato decided to sow transgenic seeds on his land.

Since cultivating transgenic products is possible by virtue of European legislation but was not yet implemented in Italy, to produce genetically modified crops like corn requires the authorization of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture.

To this question in early 2007, the Italian Ministry of Agriculture said no, because there is no plan for coexistence between GMO and non-GMO crops for the region (Friuli).

Fidenato with Silvano Dalla Libera and their association Futuragra supported by the Movimento Libertario, immediately went to the Regional Administrative Court, but the appeal was rejected in a preliminary ruling by the lack of citation of the subject most closely concerned in the proceedings in question, namely the region Friuli Venezia Giulia.

In 2008, the appeal to the Italian Council of State on 19 January 2010 ruled in favor of Fidenato.

According to the Italian Council of State, the fact that the region of Friuli had not prepared the plan for coexistence can not obstruct the right of Fidenato to sow his land with GMO, because GMO crops are allowed within the European market.

Furthermore, the plan deals with the coexistence of the socioeconomic aspects (e.g. distance of the crops the adjoining land) and not issues related to environment and health.

With this ruling, then, the Italian Council of State gave notice to the Italian Ministry of Agriculture within 90 days to give permission to Fidenato to sow his land with GMO.

The ruling of the Italian Council of State forces a rethink of policies in the agricultural field.

The Fidenato-GMO ruling has been described in Italian newspapers including Corriere della Sera , Avvenire , and radio broadcasts of national importance like Radio Radicale.

The first cultivation of GMO maize in Italy will be sown in mid-April 2010 in Vivaro (a town in Province of Pordenone) in Friuli, when the ruling of the Italian Council of State comes into effect .

Ebook

A farmer against the State (Bergamo: Leonardo Facco Editore, 2007)

External links

• Official Italian website of the Movimento Libertario
• Official Italian website of Futuragra Association of Italian farmers for the free choice of farmers and for the introduction of GMOs and biotechnology in Italy.
• Official website of Italian Federated Farmers