▲ A view of the House of Representatives in Rome, the Italian capital [EPA=Yonhap News]


Among OECD countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Italy is the lowest with 0.00 in the effectiveness of the National Assembly compared to the remuneration of members of the National Assembly, and the country just ahead of Italy recorded 0.01.




It is said that Italy and Korea are similar in the situation that the efficiency of the work of parliamentarians decreases while receiving high taxes.



Political reform experiments in Italy to reduce the number of parliamentary members and fix the high-cost, low-efficiency parliamentary system began with high support from the people.



The amendment bill, which reduced the number of Italian Senate and House of Representatives by 36 percent, was passed with the overwhelming approval of 69.6 percent of the people.

This is the result of the Italian referendum held for two days in the past 20-21 local time.



Accordingly, in Italy, from 2023, when the next parliament begins, the number of senators will be adjusted from 315 to 200, and the number of senators from 630 to 400.



Italy has 1.56 members of parliament per 100,000 citizens, more than the OECD average (0.97), and more than Germany (0.80), France (1.48) and Spain (1.32), the major countries of the European Union (EU).



It is predicted that the implementation of this plan to reduce members of the parliament will have the effect of saving nearly 500 million euros and about 700 billion won in blood tax based on the five-year term in Congress.



In terms of parliamentarian taxation alone, the remuneration of parliamentarians to GDP per capita is 5.27 times higher in Korea, and Japan and Italy are the only countries with more tax than Korea.



As of 2019, each member of the National Assembly receives a tax of about 150 million won per year.

This is the sum of various allowances such as general allowances, holiday vacation expenses, legislative activity expenses, and special activity expenses.

Here we have up to 8 assistants per member of the lawmaker.



The number of Korean National Assembly members is 300.

It consists of 253 seats in the district and 47 seats for proportional representatives.

After the Constitutional Assembly, which started with 200 seats, the number of members decreased only three times when it changed from the 3rd to the 4th National Assembly, the 6th National Assembly after the 5/16 military coup, and the 15th to the 16th National Assembly.



Last year, in the course of discussing the revision of the election law with the main idea of ​​the'quasi-linked proportional representation system' ahead of the general election, a proposal to "increase the number of lawmakers by 10% from the current 300 seats" was reviewed, but the public opinion was forced to revolt.



This is'News Pick'.