“Better a piece today than all ever”. So Prime Minister Matteo Renzi commented on the decision taken by the assembly of senators of the Democratic Party to remove the rules on the adoption of the partner's biological child (so-called stepchild adoption) from the bill Cirinnà on civil unions, for which the government will raise the question of confidence in Palazzo Madama in the vote scheduled for Thursday.
So green light to maxi-amendment which will be discussed starting tomorrow and which excludes from reform not only stepchild adoption but also the rules that would have wanted to equalize civil union and marriage (these are articles 2 and 3 of the original bill, which referred to the rules of the civil code), while the article on the reversibility of pensions is confirmed. “I think it's time to put an end to the constant postponement that has been there. We are of the opinion that we must close”, Renzi had already said clearly yesterday. The government's goal is to close the Senate within the week, by then complete the double pass to the chambers within two months.
Therefore, the strategy of an agreement prevails, from the minority of the Democratic Party considered excessively downwards, with ncd to bring home the reform, albeit incomplete. Angelino Alfano had always said he was against the adoption of his partner's son and against all the rules that make unions of gay couples superimposable on marriage, and the Democratic Party lacked at least 49 votes in the Senate, for which initially it had focused on support – later withdrawn – of Movement 5 Stars. “The Cinquestelle – commented Renzi – have made an about-face and now the risks of the parliamentary path are too high. All that remained was the intervention of the government, giving space to agreed amendments”. Now stepchild adoption could be revived in a new bill which will have a life of its own and which will be aimed at remodulating the entire discipline of adoptions.
FAT AND THE KANGAROO – Before the decision of the Pd assembly, the president of the Senate Pietro Grasso had officially communicated his intention not to admit all the "premix" amendments, therefore the "kangaroos" of Pd and Lega and to limit secret ballots as much as possible. The president's objective, already leaked last Friday, was the opposite of that later imposed by the government: Grasso intended to let the bill run its course in Parliament, without kangaroos but also without the atomic weapon of the question of trust .
The operation does not seem to have pleased Renzi and the Pd leaders too much, so much so that the group leader Louis Zanda he commented as follows: "If we had known this decision earlier, the course of the discussion would have been different". Grasso replied by explaining that, given the decision to postpone the bill by a week, there had been no longer any occasion in the Chamber in which the president could express himself on the admissibility of the surviving amendments, after the League had withdrawn 4500 of them. And , in any case, according to him the intentions of the second office of state had been known since Friday 19 February.
