A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #186 - The Country with the Noose Around Its Neck (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

At the same time, while the Senate approves the reform of the 
premiership in first reading, the Chamber in a night session approves 
the introduction of differentiated autonomy, producing as a first effect 
a first united response from the opposition in the streets, third 
chicken excluded . This is the attempt by the Prime Minister with the 
pig's eye, to put the refoundation of the institutions and of the 
Republic at the center of the political debate, to erase the foundations 
of the Republic born from the Resistance and that a new Republic was 
born, managed by a Prime Minister who governs without a balance of 
powers, an Italian-style democracy, unique in the world. The path of the 
first reform is still long because it will require a double reading and 
double approval in a compliant text, as well as the approval of a 
majoritarian electoral law yet to come that assigns a majority bonus to 
the Prime Minister's party, so as to ensure that it still has control of 
a weakened Parliament deprived of all power. It will thus happen that 
with an ever decreasing number of votes it will be possible to control 
the executive and hold power without any checks and balances on 
government activity. At the same time, the reform cancels many powers of 
the President of the Republic and produces a cascade of impoverishment 
of those of the Constitutional Court and all the other rebalancing and 
counterbalancing bodies, imagined by the Constituent Assembly in 1947 to 
ensure the democratic nature of the system. Furthermore, since it is a 
constitutional reform, the law must be submitted to a confirmatory 
referendum and therefore there seem to be all the conditions to avert 
the danger shared by 190 constitutionalists who signed Liliana Segre's 
speech criticizing the measure, delivered in the Senate at the beginning 
of the debate. But it will be necessary
for the united opposition to be able to mobilize the country, civil 
society, against this authoritarian dirigistic turn, opening a debate 
that involves everyone in the awareness that the cornerstones of 
coexistence are being called into question.

The political exchange

While the first stage of the debate on institutional reforms was taking 
place before the Senate, the Chamber, after having approved the proposal 
for justice reform which however requires further stages, has approved 
the law on differentiated autonomy increases territorial imbalances, 
destroys solidarity, puts national unity at risk, accentuates the 
imbalances already existing between territories, between metropolitan 
and internal areas, between centers and peripheries. Furthermore, the 
law with which the conditions for the activation of differentiated 
autonomy are established undermines the foundations of solidarity 
between the different Regions, the unity of the Republic on the 
territory. Those who will pay the price will be those in difficulty; 
there will be a further
weakening of the National Health System as a whole, the inequalities 
already existing will be accentuated, especially in the field of health 
care. This is because the resources necessary to support it derive from 
the financial availability of each Region and this can only affect the 
quality of the service and the times and methods of delivery. Due to the 
reduction of available resources, the possibilities of bearing the cost 
of so-called health tourism will decrease, the size of which will also 
grow due to the fact that the Regions that have more resources will see 
an improvement in the quality of the specialist services provided to the 
detriment of those regions that will not have the resources necessary to 
support investments in structures and hiring of not only medical but 
paramedical personnel, with an overall impact on the quality and 
quantity of the services provided.
The system of autonomies, combined with the principle of subsidiarity, 
not coincidentally non-existent in the Italian Constitution until the 
infamous reform of the fifth title of 2001, of art. 118 of the 
Constitution wanted by the left with a very small number of votes, opens 
up further spaces for the market in social and essential services that 
are an inalienable part of the
rights of the person and for private intervention in the provision of 
such services, diminishing and mortifying the primary and essential role 
that should be assigned to public structures. These evident distortions 
of the system are declared to be remedied through the introduction of 
the LEP, or essential levels of performance that should take into 
account «the effective definition of the essential levels of performance 
relating to civil and social rights» that must be «guaranteed uniformly 
throughout the national territory» because «there is no development 
without solidarity, attention to the least, valorization of differences 
and co-responsibility in promoting the common good».

A reform out of time

Differentiated autonomy, initially conceived as a secessionist 
hypothesis in the context of the transformation of Italy into a Federal 
Republic, was born out of time compared to 1991, the era in which it was 
conceived by Bossi and Miglio.
Then as now the point of reference for the northern regions of the 
country was constituted by the economic area that gravitates around 
Bavaria and which at the time acted as a driving force in the management 
of the German economy in close alliance with Rhine capitalism. Today the 
Bavarian hegemony over German politics is in crisis, as is Germany, and to
catch its breath it is building an alliance in some of its components 
with Lutheran Saxony, hypothesizing a future alliance between CSU and 
AfD (Christian Social Union in Bavaria and Allianz fur Deutscheland). 
This is the not least reason that pushes Salvini's League to place 
itself on the extreme right of the political spectrum in Europe and to 
identify a dialogue with AfD at a European level. The intermediate 
political framework of the League, the various Fontana, Zaia, Federica, 
seem not to realize all this and are marching quickly towards the abyss, 
leaving the leader of their political formation to try to gather 
consensus and profits by procuring lucrative contracts for companies 
that will invest in the pharaonic
and unlikely construction of the bridge over the Strait of Messina, 
cultivating relationships with the local mafia. More cunningly, the 
founder of the League seems to have intuited this scenario and has 
distanced himself from the League and from differentiated autonomy.

What to do

What to do now that differentiated autonomy is the law of the State: 
according to many constitutionalists, an abrogative referendum would 
probably be inadmissible. But even if it were not so, there probably 
would not be a vote before 2026. Negotiations for differentiated 
autonomy agreements with individual Regions can instead start 
immediately - as Zaia already requests - at least for the subjects 
and/or functions not conditioned by the prior determination of essential 
levels of performance (LEP) impossible to do due to the absolute lack of 
resources.
In this regard, it is worth opening a parenthesis: now that it will be 
necessary to apply the stability pact that the government has committed 
to respect with the European Union, it will be necessary to find 25 
billion for next year's budget, therefore an impact to which to allocate 
to the renewal of the reduction of the tax wedge and 10 billion in 
savings on the budget to be found by reviewing the distribution of 
resources. With these moonlights and the impossibility of balancing the 
accounts, it is decidedly impossible to hypothesize the identification 
of resources for the implementation of differentiated autonomy.
However, there are in the subjects that are in principle devolvable 
about 200 state functions out of a total of 500, which do not require 
funding and which are independent of the LEP as they do not directly 
concern levels of performance. On these, the negotiation will be in the 
hands of the regional presidents and the government. This will be the 
phase of greatest risk for the one and indivisible Republic. If even 
just one or two regions were to get their hands on the school, a much 
sought-after objective by the regional political class, a domino effect 
could be produced that would induce other governors to formulate similar 
requests, which at that point would be difficult to refuse.

The PD's opposition to the test

However, it would be possible for one or more regions to appeal to the 
Constitutional Court. It should be remembered that a popular initiative 
law was presented to the Regional Council of Emilia Romagna, still 
chaired by Bonaccini, Vice President Schlein, and signed by 6,000 
citizens who asked that the Regional Council vote to withdraw from the 
2018 agreement signed by Emilia Romagna, following the requests of 
Lombardy Veneto, formulated after a false referendum independently 
called, in support of the initiative of the respective Regional Councils to
request the opening of devolution on a set of matters. It seems that 
Bonaccini has given his availability in this regard. It would be, for 
once, a demonstration of political loyalty, common sense and intelligence.
On the other hand, the CGIL is pushing in this direction with the 
initiative la via maestra that has formulated a request in this sense to 
all regional presidents, inviting them to present a question of 
constitutional legitimacy relating to the law on differentiated autonomy 
just approved. This initiative is not isolated and is developing 
together with the campaign for the four referendum questions against job 
insecurity, formulated by the CGIL which should lead to the de facto 
repeal of the Job Act or at least of those parts of it that increase job 
insecurity and reduce protections related to the defense of the job and 
that have dismantled the labor process as provided for by the Workers' 
Statute,
canceling the role and function of legislation and the labor judiciary.
It is necessary that the opposition as a whole equips itself with a set 
of tools that are partly legal, partly institutional, but also 
mobilization in the streets and in the workplace, in order to dictate 
the political agenda and impose on Parliament and the government its own 
solutions on issues that concern equality and protection, health and 
social needs, rights and welfare, not that support poverty and 
marginalization, that fight job insecurity, underpaid and poor work, to 
give real values to wages and the necessary dignity to work.
The left must rediscover its unity in the face of the threat to the 
founding values of coexistence and, precisely for this purpose, must 
clearly resolve the dilemma regarding its position on war, clarifying 
the radical rejection of conflict as a solution to international 
disputes. In this regard, it is not enough
the sacrosanct opposition to the Arab-Israeli conflict through the 
support of a solution that provides for the formation of two States that 
agree to coexist, but a serious distancing from the causes and effects 
of the conflict in Ukraine is needed, with respect to which the reasons 
and instrumental nature of this war must be taken into account, in order 
to arrive at a chalked-out fire and negotiations on the future structure 
of that territory that cannot arise from the continuous fueling of the 
war through the supply of weapons, allowing a proxy war to take place, 
with the massacre of the Ukrainian and Russian people to the full 
benefit of the economic and commercial interests of the extra-European 
powers.
The growing poverty of the peoples of Europe needs the resources now 
burned by the war so that they can be used to finance the greater 
well-being of the populations of the continent and action of solidarity 
towards that most disadvantaged part of the world that needs support, 
help, well-being.

GL

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/06/30/il-paese-con-il-cappio-al-collo/
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