If Prime Minister Matteo Renzi loses the constitutional referendum of 4 December, Italy could leave the euro. Wolfgang Munchau writes it in the Financial Times, commenting on the next Italian electoral round.
In reality, the root causes of this impending defeat - according to the editorialist - have nothing to do with the referendum itself, but rather with Italy's economic performance since the country adopted the euro in 1999. Indeed, total factor productivity fell by 5% in Italy, while it grew by around 10% in Germany and France. The second reason is the failed attempt to create an economic and banking union after the 2010-2012 crisis and in the turn towards austerity.
These are the two factors that led to the birth of populism. Italy has three opposition parties, all three in favor of leaving the euro (M5S, Forza Italia and Lega Nord) and probably the failure of the referendum will favor the arrival in power of one or of these parties.
Meanwhile, Confindustria, in an internal paper, elaborates and lines up numbers and data provided by the Chamber, Senate, IMF, Bank of Italy, Svimez and the Constitutional Court to represent the reasons for the yes to the constitutional referendum of 4 December, in favor of which it officially sided Avenue of Astronomy.
It took the Parliament an average of 55 days to approve the 563 ordinary laws presented during the current legislature, the XVII, net of constitutional ones, conversion laws, budget laws and European ones; the Senate 'dedicated' 360 days to the first reading and 226 days to the second. Not better in the previous legislature, between 2008 and 2013: the 91 parliamentary initiative laws presented during the first Berlusconi and then Monti governments needed 442 days to be passed. Just over the 400 days needed to approve the 2 regional initiative laws, compared to the 116 days taken by the 298 government initiative bills which, however, also include the conversion provisions of the decree laws, to cross the assembly line.
The consequences of a failure to amend Title V of the Constitution, which fueled the dispute between the State and the Regions, were also targeted: from 2001 to today, more than 1500 appeals have been presented to the Consulta, of which 700, still calculates via dell'Astronomia, concerned matters which, with the referendum, will return to the exclusive competence of the state.
Heavy "crossing" times, therefore, which have slowed down if not blocked the construction of strategic works: in fact, it takes an average of 4,5 years to complete a work financed by cohesion policies. 61% of the time is occupied by dead times due to administrative blocks in the transition from one phase to the next (planning, assignment, execution) due to waiting for decisions from other bodies, judicial pronouncements, mishaps along the way. In 2012, 50% of all judgments of the Constitutional Court concerned legitimacy judgments primarily, that is, raised directly by the State or the Region.
And since the 2001 reform, more than 1500 appeals have been presented to the Consulta in the context of the State-Regions dispute, 700 of which concerned matters that with the referendum will return to exclusive state competence. Furthermore, from 2000 to 2015, the incidence of Constitutional Court judgments linked to the State-Regions conflict increased by 8 times; if in 2000 this accounted for 5% of the Court's rulings, in 2015 the weight exceeded 40% after having reached peaks of 47% in previous years.
