“The Calderoli proposal on thedifferentiated autonomy of the Regions it is not a small and marginal adjustment of local autonomies. It is a profound upheaval that opens the door to a country managed in a completely different way. For this reason it is strange that no party, with rare exceptions, has pronounced itself clearly on this matter. It is strange that there has not been a pragmatic discussion on where we want to go and above all on which structure is more efficient and better able to serve the interests of citizens. A revolution of the kind cannot be guided by the ideological fury of some political group and by the interests of the local ruling political classes instead of looking at the long-term well-being of the entire citizenry“.
Professor Gianfranco Viesti, an economist at the University of Bari, has long been at the forefront of the battle against the differentiated regionalism and now against the Calderoli draft. There are many reasons and they do not concern only, or even principally, the conflict between the North, which wants autonomy to manage its tax money, and the South, which fears suffering a reduction in transfers from the centre, and therefore in the levels services for its citizens.
“Reduce everything to one North-South conflict it's a distorted way and dangerous to address the issue. There is a problem of financial resources, but now the Governors of the North themselves say they don't want more money than the State currently spends on services that should be passed on to the Regions. And then the exponents of the South themselves are ambiguous because on the one hand they are afraid of having less funds, but on the other they are attracted by the possibility of asking for new powers, to expand their own dominion. The problem concerns the whole of Italy and the way in which public affairs will be managed over a long period of years”.
Let's start with a preliminary question. In other words, let us ask ourselves whether the current regionalism has worked or whether significant dysfunctions have emerged.
“The current attribution of responsibility does not work well as can be seen from the enormous amount of conflicts of jurisdiction pending in the Constitutional Court and above all from what has emerged with the COVID pandemic. In this case the pandemic made us open our eyes. In fact, an excessive difference has emerged in the choices made by the various regions in contrast with what a national health system should be. And above all, these choices have not led to more efficient systems, on the contrary. So in the first place it would be necessary to decide which competences should be brought back to the center and with which method to establish which are the proxies that can be attributed to the regions based on their actual territorial specificities“.
That is, first we need to understand what is more efficient if it is done from the center and what is better if it is managed locally.
"Certain. We need to go into the merits of the issues before taking ideological positions. It is not a matter of being centralist or regionalist. We need to understand what works best in the center and what instead can be delegated to the periphery. The German model, it seems, works well with a positive balance between the center and the periphery. In Italy, it would be necessary to bring skills back to the center, for example in energy or infrastructure matters, while the regions should demonstrate that the skills they require are based on effective local specificities. For example, if the Veneto region claimed the competence to deal with the problems of the lagoon, it could prove to be more efficient than the central, distant and slow power".
We should therefore start from a totally different approach. Before tackling changes in the attribution of powers, a concrete discussion of the individual problems should be made. Politics should take on more responsibility and clearly take a stand.
“In fact, if the current Regions don't work well, it is also the fault of the center. Governments and Parliaments should have made framework laws, setting precise parameters, then leaving the responsibility of calibrating their implementation to the local level. This has not happened, except recently with the Pnrr which set a framework and then activated local autonomies in the execution. And in this case the Regions have been sacrificed compared to the Municipalities which have had more funds and more powers. In short, the question before being institutional is political. In the sense that the question cannot be tackled only by contrasting regionalism with presidentialism. First it would be necessary for the parties to find a way to explain to the voters which Italy they want to build and how it is more convenient to distribute management powers among the various institutional levels“.
But instead the debate risks being choked by the proposal to leave to Parliament only the ratification of what was decided in the negotiation between the Regions and the Government. It is an absurd scheme because there would be the risk of introducing significant and irreversible changes without a real discussion in Parliament and in the country.
“I believe that the requests made by the northern regions to be granted endless powers were born a bit as a provocation. No one expected them to be taken seriously. Instead, the Gentiloni government, fearing who knows what Northern League wave, made a first draft of an agreement and since then the PD has lost its voice on the matter. Even today, regionalism is not mentioned among the candidates for the party secretariat, perhaps so as not to embarrass Bonaccini who, as president of his region, has presented similar requests to those of the Veneto. The parties must say whether it is actually sensible to give the regions veto powers over matters such as energy, transport, museums, the environment, schools and so on. I repeat, first we need to discuss the merits of the issues and then find the most suitable legal and institutional solutions to address the problems. “
Now there is also the proposal to restore the direct election of the provincial assemblies and their presidents.
“The problem does not lie in the cost (2-300 million) of the provincial councilors, but in the fact that the Delrio reform ended badly. The problem is that the Regions are bulimic, they have pushed the central government to the top and the cities that perform important functions and are appreciated by public opinion to the bottom. So if there is a need to re-establish a role for the Provinces, especially in very large regions within which there are different needs and different weights between the various territories, let it be said what can be done without overlapping. For example, there are very different needs between the cities of Milan and Pavia. Pavia would need a larger territory to be able to make its voice heard“.
IIn conclusion, it can be said that the current situation is not ideal as the current local autonomies have not shown that they are really more efficient than the centre, but that the ideas circulating to remedy this situation are completely out of line. There is no politics, there are no parties, there is no debate in the country.
“You should take a break and start over. Ban on ideologies and political forcing (the acceleration by Calderoli perhaps depends on the imminent regional elections in Lombardy) and examine the situation pragmatically to evaluate the most efficient solutions. Paradoxically, even the men of the left who have the good of the country at heart at this juncture should be rooting for Meloni who is the head of a traditionally centralist party and who in 2014 deposited a bill in the Chamber to abolish the Regions. We live in a country where we certainly don't get bored. But citizens can do a lot. On a proposal from Massimo Villone, we signed a constitutional reform bill to amend article 116 of the Constitution in order to clarify the attribution of responsibilities between the center and the periphery and restore the Italians' right of referendum on the changes made. If the discussion on differentiated regionalism passes, it should be set on new foundations”.
