What the autonomy bill provides (and why the opposition is at war)

For the first time, there were tense moments in the Parliament. During the voting of the Calderoli bill on differentiated autonomy in the Senate, the opposition sang the Mameli anthem and waved the tricolor flag in protest. The floor now goes to Parliament, where another parliamentary battle is expected. So what is the bill on differentiated autonomy and why is it causing such turmoil in the waters of Italian politics? Let’s take turns and move forward with points.

1) Differentiated Autonomy is present in the Constitution; Calderoli DDL is a regular law

First of all, we need to underline that the bill voted in the Parliaments does not establish the so-called “differentiated autonomy of Italian regions”. All of this was already foreseen in the Title V reform initiated by the center-left in 2001. At the time, Article 117 defined all matters falling within the jurisdiction of the state and “competing” matters between the state and local governments. All unspecified issues remained the prerogative of the regions.

Not only that: Article 116 stated that Regions could request greater autonomy from the State. The constitutional statute after the 2001 reform states that “The law shall be approved by the Assemblies by an absolute majority of their members, based on the agreement reached between the State concerned and the Territory.”

And the Calderoli bill is based on exactly these foundations; therefore it has no constitutional value, but is an ordinary law of the State. Translation: Approval requires two steps in parliament and a simple majority of members. The ball is now in the Parliament’s court.

2) What does Calderoli’s law provide?

The law consists of 11 articles that determine the legislative and administrative procedures regarding the implementation of the third paragraph of Article 116 of the Constitution, that is, regulating the granting of “other forms and special conditions of autonomy”. It therefore aims to define agreements between the State and the regions. Requests must come from the Territories themselves, after consulting local authorities.

There are 23 topics of concurrent legislation, and they are very diverse: from health protection to education, from sports to the environment, from energy to transportation, from culture to foreign trade. The risk is clearly to face a State that moves at different speeds and risks major fragmentation. To avoid all this, we thought of “Lep”, an acronym that stands for Key Performance Levels, and that is exactly why Fdi introduced an amendment that partially replaced the original Northern League bill.

3) What is Leps and what does it do?

Other forms of autonomy are granted solely on the basis of the definition of Key Performance Levels (Lep), i.e. the minimum service standards that must be provided throughout the national territory. So how is Lep defined? It is based on historical recognition (of the last three years) of government spending in each region.

An amendment by Fratelli d’Italia reveals that further autonomy will be granted only based on the definition of Lep and the resources provided in the Budget Law. Therefore, without Lep and without resources, Autonomy cannot actually be implemented. A kind of state “control room” is also envisaged, which will have to conduct a study of the regulatory framework in relation to the administrative function and ordinary territories of each state.

4) What are the timelines and what is meant by “safeguards”?

The deadline was set at two years. Within 24 months of the law coming into force, the government must determine LEP levels and quantities to make the law enforceable. Once this step is determined, the time required to reach an agreement between the State and the Regions is 5 months.

A safeguard clause was also added to the text revised by the Commission: The state can replace regional governments if local governments violate international agreements and community legislation. But also if citizens fail to meet the basic performance levels (Lep) regarding their civil and social rights.

5) Because the opposition claims the reform could divide Italy

Almost the entire opposition agrees: the reform sought by the Union will widen the gap between Italy’s regions, especially between North and South, especially in the strategic and core sectors. The risk is the real “de facto” separation of the Northern regions, which would undermine the entire national unity. For example, there are strong doubts about the stability of the National Health Service, which is already in crisis due to blocked waiting lists and scarcity of resources invested at state level. Many also emphasize that “regionalism” leads to a significant increase in costs for the whole society rather than a limitation of public spending.

The opposition also sees the danger of budget austerity, with basic services such as healthcare in danger of collapsing and confirming the gap between “Series A” citizens and “Series B” citizens. The Democratic Party particularly attacks Fratelli d’Italia for trading this reform for a strong premiership. But there are also many unknowns from an administrative and economic perspective, and there is also a report from the Bank of Italy last July criticizing the reform.

6) Bank of Italy doubts: Reform could reduce Italian productivity

There are many issues in which regions may seek greater autonomy: from foreign trade to transport, from education to scientific research, and it is emphasized that coordination at the national (and often supranational) level will be needed for many of these sectors. The Bank of Italy states this in a report submitted to the Senate. The report particularly highlights how Italy paid the price for its regional fragmentation during the epidemic at the healthcare level. For the Via Nazionale, decentralization is not always appropriate and it will be necessary to produce “case by case” analyzes to understand when it would be appropriate to grant greater autonomy.

According to the Bank of Italy, with this reform the State will also lose control of a significant part of public expenditure and will have to intervene more than now in case of failure in regional finances, among other tasks. Not only that: the reform will also reduce productivity, which is one of the weak points of our economy.

Decentralization of services will proceed in the opposite direction to the savings that can be achieved by using large centres, due to what is described in economics as “Economies of Scale”. This term refers to the relationship between an increase in the scale of production (of a company, production unit or facility) and a decrease in the unit cost of the product. To give an example that everyone can understand: the same healthcare service may use the same IT platform and the same accounting service, or turn to the same commodity manufacturers to reduce costs. Things become much more complicated when centers are fragmented and not coordinated with each other at the national level. The risk is therefore of having more expensive and qualitatively “less efficient” services, especially in poorer parts of the country.

Source: Today IT

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