Valle d'Aosta/ Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sicily and Sardinia are the Regions with Special Statute introduced immediately after the war. And it is precisely from the model of the Special Statute that the bill on thedifferentiated autonomy approved by the council of ministers. L'Observatory for Italian Public Accounts driven by Giampaolo Galli a simple question arises: "it's a good idea?" According to CPI experts, the answer is no", for two types of reasons: “the big one complexity in administrative management public on the national territory that would result and for the assumed funding system for devolved functions, based on partnerships at predetermined rates on large national taxes. This would benefit the regions with a higher dynamic of tax bases to the detriment of the national community, forcing the State to chase with extra resources the imbalances that can thus be generated”, reads the report.
The characteristics of the Special Statute
Regions with special statutes can be considered in their own way a form of differentiated autonomy according to the provisions of article 116 of the Constitution. Unlike the Regions with ordinary statute, whose competences are uniform throughout the national territory, the attribution of resources and competences to each RSS is governed by its own statute, which has constitutional value, in a constant dialectic with the State.
In particular, each statute contains the lists of matters on which the individual "special regions" and autonomous provinces can exercise legislative and administrative power and also specifies the subjects for which the local authority has exclusive legislative power and those for which the power is only integrative. In the first case, for example on the organization of local authorities and on the administration of the territory, the Regions and the autonomous Provinces can legislate autonomously, in the second (an example could be education) instead they can only adapt and/or integrate the state laws to make them more consistent with the needs and characteristics of the area.
“However, it is necessary to distinguish carefully between the matters that the statute attributes to the legislative powers of the various RSS e what they actually do, i.e. the autonomous functions that were then effectively activated in the various subjects", underlines the CPI observatory, according to which the statutes can be considered as the set of all the subjects for which the RSS is recognized a certain degree of autonomy, but this process becomes effective if and when the RSSs issue laws, in agreement with the central State, to activate one or more functions falling within the statutory matters. With the same formal autonomy guaranteed by the statute, the reality can therefore be very different.
How the Regions with Special Statutes are financed and how they are spent
The main feature of the financing system of the Special Statute Regions is that of being based on revenue sharing of the state taxes collected or accrued on their territories. In fact, these regions they retain part of the revenue from the main taxes nationals collected on their own territories. Each territory with a special statute has a different partnership: ranging from 100% of Valle d'Aosta to 90% of Trentino-Alto Adige at gradually lower rates and in turn differentiated for the others.
The different attribution "reflects the original allocation of competences imagined for the different RSSs and the situation of their economies at the time of the stipulation of their statutes", explain the experts. The fact that the economic situation of these regions has changed over the years also explains the different activation of the functions. For example, the per capita GDP of Trentino Alto Adige, substantially in line with the national one in 1951, became 2018% higher in 44; vice versa, for Sicily the regional GDP per capita was 58% of the national one in 1951 and remained so in 2018. "Since the tax revenues substantially follow the GDP, the abundance of resources guaranteed by the partnerships has allowed the Autonomous Province of Trento to absorb more and more state powers, while the low growth of Sicilia it has forced it to remain heavily dependent on the state, renouncing to activate many of the powers envisaged by its statute”.
In this context, it must be added that starting from 2012, even the Regions with Special Statutes are required to respect internal stability pacts and to contribute to public finance and debt reduction objectives.
Going from funding to expense, the CPI Observatory uses the database of the Territorial Public Accounts as a basis. Numbers in hand, with the exception of Lazio, the average total expenditure of all public administrations in per capita terms in the Ordinary Statute Regions amounts to 14.400 euro. The per capita expenditure of Sicily and Sardinia is similar, while for the two regions with a special statute in the north and the two autonomous provinces, instead, the 18.000 euros per capita. Why? “The general impression is that in the passage of a function from the State to the wealthy northern SSRs, these have taken advantage of their abundant resources to offerand more services to its citizens, spending more for the delegated functions than the central State does for the same services in the territories of the RSOs”, reads the report.
Is the Special Statute a model for differentiated autonomy?
According to the Observatory of Italian Public Accounts, it would be better to try not to use the model of the Special Statute for the "new" differentiated autonomy. For two reasons: The first is “for the great complexity that the presence of five Regions with special statute, each characterized by a different set of functions and resources, has entailed for the management of the public administration in the territory of these Regions”. “The current mechanism, with the State first attributing generous sharing to the RSS and then partially removes them for purposes of national solidarity, although understandable in the light of the rigidity of the statutes, it appears at least singular ”, add the experts.
The risk is therefore that, in the near future, the implementation of the Calderoli bill will transform all Regions with Ordinary Statute in Regions with Special Statute, each of which with different functions and resources, giving rise to a national chaos that could make life difficult for businesses and citizens who will be called to deal with 21 different regional legislations on the same functions.
The second reason is about the funding system. Quotas were first established in RSS shares to state taxes and then, depending on how the resources deriving from these shares evolved, it was decided, through negotiation with the State, which functions these resources were to cover. Thus, in the RSS where the dynamics of the taxable bases has been particularly lively, the RSSs have gradually taken on new powers, while in the others the national state has intervened to guarantee the resources necessary to finance the services in any case.
“Our accounts – reads the report – suggest that it is at least probable that the resources left to these territories through the partnerships have been overall greater than would have been necessary to finance the services provided. And if this "generosity" is sustainable for the public budget as long as we are talking about very small realities, it is unlikely that it would be so if the same process involved the great northern regions of the country, where a large part of the taxable base of national taxes is concentrated”. What worries the experts is therefore the fact that the Calderoli bill "seems to prefigure a financing process for the functions devolved to the regions that is completely similar to that described above for the RSS ... But obviously it cannot work like this: it is a clear win-win for the regions, but risks being a lose-lose for the State and the rest of the national community, forced to chasing imbalances with extra resources which can thus be generated. It doesn't seem like a sustainable model to us,” they conclude.
