The idea of placing the reform of Art. 41 of the Constitution will certainly generate very heated debates in Parliament and outside: but will it be of any use? From a merit point of view, the initiative does not seem to change much. The current article 41 provides that “1. Private economic initiative is free. 2. It cannot take place contrary to social utility or in such a way as to cause damage to freedom, security or human dignity. 3. The law establishes the appropriate programs and controls so that private and public economic activity can be directed to social ends”.
The third paragraph, which in the Constituent Assembly represented a compromise between the planning positions of the left and the liberal ones, and which also has the merit of reserving the possibility of establishing programs and controls only to the law, is what may appear to be in contrast with a vision of market-oriented economic initiative: because one cannot think that, even for the most convinced liberal, economic initiative can be exercised in spite of the values protected by the second paragraph.
Basically, the Government's proposal, in addition to adding some somewhat baroque qualifications (such as "everything that is not prohibited by law is free"), consists in abolishing it. Maybe it's a good idea: except that, over twenty years ago, a liberal constitutionalist, Giuseppe Bognetti, observed that the third paragraph had already been implicitly abolished with the entry of Italy into the Community, then the Union, the European Union, and the affirmation of Community provisions which, as recognized by the Constitutional Court, prevail over the same constitutional provisions.
The four freedoms, of movement of goods, services, people and capital, envisaged by the European Treaties, as well as the freedom of competition, are incompatible with programs and controls, and in fact have given rise to the repeal of the third paragraph (as well as the entry into our economic constitution of concepts that have not yet entered the minds of many politicians, such as competition and the market).
Of course, from a methodological point of view, taking note of it, even if it is useless, could have an important political meaning: here is a government that seriously wants to liberalize! And this meaning could have in fact in 1994, when for the first time Berlusconi went to government, on the basis of a liberal renewal program. Except that, in the meantime, the majority has changed its programme: since 2001 it has abandoned the issue of privatization and liberalisation, preaching rather the prevalence of politics on the market, to favor national champions and remove them from competition, especially from abroad.
It is therefore legitimate to doubt that resipescence rather represents a "coup de theatre" to avoid facing problems. Because what the government needs to convince us of today is not that it is willing to formally repeal what has already been repealed in practice, but that it is truly willing to remove the constraints on economic initiative. Basically, rather than thinking about generating momentous debates in Parliament on the limits of private economic initiative, the government would do better to show an effective willingness to address the real constraints on the initiative: from fiscal and labor cost constraints to of "governance", relaunching privatizations at national and local level and undertaking measures to stimulate competition; finally by seriously tackling the problem of simplification.
If, according to the IFC, the arm of the World Bank that seeks to develop private enterprise, the Italian institutional environment is much less favorable than that of Colombia and Ghana (and slightly more favorable than that of Egypt) to private economic initiative, and it has become less and less so in recent years (this year we have slipped from seventy-sixth to eightieth place in the overall ranking) the reason cannot be in art. 41: but in the jumble of bureaucratic bottlenecks and plurality of decision-making levels, all probably justified by some law, evidently escaped from the Calderoli stake (another theatrical gesture) which make starting a business in Italy extremely difficult. And on which the reform of the art. 41 will have no effect.
The government, and all political forces, should reflect on the events that led to Ikea's decision to abandon, after years of waiting, two major investment projects: in Pisa and Turin. It may be appropriate to recall that the Turin one sank despite the Region and the Municipality supporting it at all costs, because the Province was against changing the destination of the land. "It is not our job to find entrepreneurs," said the president of the province. Maybe not even make them go away: another cost, indirect, but no less serious, of the useless provincial institution.
In conclusion, freeing private initiative in our country is a long process that requires firm political intention to oppose public and private interests to the development of private initiative, and at the same time determination to redesign processes and institutions, including the number of decision makers , aggregating political and social consensus on these issues: which now seems to be united but which probably risks falling apart as soon as specific interventions were to be identified (abolish the provinces and close a lot of useless bodies, such as Aci, Enit and the Union, privatizing local public services through tenders, auctioning television frequencies, abolishing or reducing reserves and closed numbers in the professions, just to name a few). An epochal debate on the limits to private economic initiative risks having very limited concrete effects and does not seem exactly the appropriate tool to facilitate the reform process.
