Preliminary green light of the Council of Ministers to the bill on thedifferentiated regional autonomy presented by Northern League minister Roberto Calderoli. A provision which, de facto, takes up the ancient battle for federalism carried on by Umberto Bossi's Northern League and which has been met with fierce criticism from the opposition and the trade unions. Preliminary ok, arrived with perfect timing before the regional elections of Lazio and Lombardy, a further examination will follow in a subsequent CDM. Not only that, after today's green light, the bill will have to be submitted to the opinion of the unified State-Regions-City Conference.
What does the bill on differentiated autonomy provide for?
The bill, made up of 10 articles and modified in recent days by the pre-Council of Ministers, represents only a formal scaffolding and will therefore have to be followed by one or more measures which will set down black and white the rules to be followed to arrive at autonomy. The text provides that the Regions may ask to have exclusive jurisdiction on some subjects including education, health and transport.
Fundamental for the attribution of functions to the Regions will be the determination of the Lep, the essential levels of performance, which would be the minimum thresholds of services that must be guaranteed to all citizens on the national territory. The lep will be defined within a year of the entry into force of the law on autonomy, through a special Dpcm (an instrument strongly criticized by the opposition). Even before that, however, a control room will identify the Lep for each sector.
Based on the provisions, the process for the agreement between the Region (also with special statute) and the State during which decisions will be taken on exclusive competences will last at least 5 months, including 60 days for the examination of the Chambers. Once approved, the agreements will last up to 10 years and can also be renewed or interrupted earlier, with 12 months' notice (of the State or Region). are also provided equalization measures to avoid economic imbalances between the Regions that adhere to differentiated autonomy and those that do not. There are no details in the text, but it says that the "State promotes the effective exercise of civil and social rights" also through "the unification of the various additional or extraordinary sources of state funding". The purpose of these equalizations would be to avoid the creation of "territories and services of series A and B”, Giorgia Meloni said in recent days.
The criticisms of the oppositions
"It's a bad project, goes against a country that is already divided, already has too many inequalities. It's not what Italy needs”, accuses the secretary of the CGIL Maurizio Landini.
Some of the principals are also very critical representatives of the Democratic Party including the two candidates for the secretariat Elly Schlein and Stefano Bonaccini. “The design of differentiated autonomy is a slap from Meloni to the south of the country. That text had to pass through the Conference of Regions before arriving at the CDM", said Schlein, while for the Bonaccini dem it is "an inadmissible draft".
“The approval of the Autonomy bill in the CDM is yet another electoral mockery of a policy that makes propaganda on the institutional structure of the state. This stuff comes to parliament in 6 months. But they approve it hastily and badly the week before the regional elections,” the leader of Action-IV wrote on Twitter Charles Calenda.
All the regional governors belonging to the majority parties expressed themselves in favor of the law, including Attilio Fontana (Lombardy), Luca Zaia (Veneto), Giovanni Toti (Liguria).
