A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI @188 - In the Referendum on differentiated autonomy (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

After the publication of Law 26 June 2024, no. 86, which introduces the 
differentiated autonomy of the Regions, on the one hand, initiatives 
aimed at repealing this law have taken shape, on the other hand, the 
Regions in favor of introducing the measure (Veneto Lombardy, Piedmont, 
Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria), have rushed to present requests to open 
negotiations to stipulate the necessary conventions preparatory to the 
transfer of competences or at least those that do not require funding, 
since the law in fact lacks the necessary coverage to implement it.
The opposition, against the law, have implemented the necessary 
initiatives to prevent its application by acting on two fronts: On the 
one hand, the Regional Councils of Sardinia, Puglia, Tuscany and 
Campania have appealed to the Constitutional Court, challenging the 
legitimacy of the law which, in their opinion, exceeds the powers of the 
government and calls into question those of the Regions excluded from 
active participation in the procedure. Emilia Romagna is not among the 
Regions that have turned to the Consulta, which is paying for the 
ambiguities of its President and its council, which before the approval 
of the law had maintained an ambiguous behavior, joining in with their 
own request for the transfer of competences to the Regions managed by 
the right. Its President elected to the European Parliament and resigned 
sees the regional council in charge for current affairs and therefore 
deprived of the capacity to deliberate in this sense.
Despite these contradictions, parties and social and political movements 
have started a collection of signatures to call a popular referendum 
with an extremely clear question: "Do you want the law of 26 June 2024, 
n. 86, "Provisions for the implementation of the differentiated autonomy 
of the Regions with ordinary statute pursuant to Article 116, third 
paragraph, of the Constitution" to be repealed?
Heeding the appeal of the proponents of the referendum, who filed the 
question before the Constitutional Court, more than 500,000 citizens 
have already signed, in the space of just three weeks. the question 
taking advantage of the fact that the online subscription procedure for 
the question has finally been activated, as required by law. To this 
number must be added the signatures collected at the stands organized in 
many squares and events even if these signatures will have to be 
authenticated and certified unlike the online ones that already are.
The political effects of what is happening have quickly been felt, even 
in the majority parties and especially in Forza Italia, which has seen 
the Calabrian governor Occhiuto express well-founded doubts about the 
measure. Opening the way to his party's strategy of distancing itself, 
at least partially, from the government's action. while not breaking the 
solidarity of the majority, the Calabrian governor in place of the 
stakes to the implementation procedures.
The effects of this stance have intersected with the debate that has 
developed on the ius scholae that has practically monopolized the 
political chatter of the summer, together with the gossip about the 
alleged investigations that the sister of the prime minister is 
supposedly the subject of, seasoned with self-produced news about the 
family affairs of the traditionally irregular Meloni clan, all seasoned 
with a more than generous dose of victim mentality. If this gossip 
activity put together by the Fratelli d'Italia entourage seems to be 
aimed at staying on the media scene anyway, implementing a mass 
distraction operation so as not to address the serious and real problems 
of the country, such as the prison crisis, the dark clouds gathering 
over the Italian economy in view of the autumn budget, the shovelfuls of 
dung received in the face following the negotiations at the community 
level regarding the composition of the new Commission and the 
designation of the Italian Commissioner, the strategy designed by Forza 
Italia appears more consistent in its reasons and founded in its objectives.
The party that was Berlusconi's. strong of the good electoral result in 
the European elections, having sensed the profound meaning and political 
weight of the implementation of differentiated autonomy in a large part 
of the country, he glimpses in a very probable disastrous outcome of the 
referendum the causes of a possible crisis of the government and of the 
very alliance that supports it and therefore tries to distance himself 
in advance, albeit timidly and with a prudent tactic, while aiming to 
gather the consensus of the moderate electorate, which has revealed 
itself insensitive to the sirens of Renzi and Calenda.

A summer and drawing room debate can well carry out the task of starting 
to introduce the seed of a differentiation and a distancing from the 
other two parties of the majority, increasingly busy competing for the 
most right-wing position, the most identity-based. of the purest and 
toughest, to play the part of the custodians of an electoral mandate 
that continues to consider, despite a thousand contradictions, the 
migrant problem as a priority, which indeed it is, but not from the 
point of view from which the government addresses it, that is, that of 
the fight against illegal emigration, made inevitable by a law on 
emigration and a completely inadequate immigration policy, but from that 
of keeping the accounts in order to keep the pension system afloat and, 
why not, the health system. Even the new president of the INPS, wanted 
by the right-wing government, was forced to admit, together with 
Giorgetti himself. Minister of the Treasury, that the pension system can 
only support itself if the number of active workers increases and this 
can only come from emigration that must be organized and qualified, made 
legal so that immigrant workers become contributors; a different 
solution based on the birth rate and demographic growth, does not offer 
credible solutions especially in the short term. Furthermore, the 
conditions of super-exploitation of migrants have highlighted the 
unmanageability of the clandestine labor market that the Government 
fuels with its immigration policy.

Differentiated autonomy new financial and stability pact

The new financial that is being prepared will not reserve even a cent 
for the financing of the LEP (minimum levels of benefits) of which, 
moreover, not even the parameters that allow their quantification and 
identification have been defined. And yet the measure on differentiated 
autonomy is extremely dangerous and is much more than a flag planted by 
the League that certifies the achievement of a goal it has long desired 
but achieved out of time, when the economic and structural reasons that 
could have made it convenient, at least for the regions that request its 
implementation, have completely disappeared, together with the economic 
collapse of the German economy. The Bavarian area and Rhine capitalism 
are no longer the locomotive of Europe and no longer constitute the 
saving anchor for the economies of the regions of northern Italy. In 
this situation what remains is an autarchic project for the management 
of resources that will create increasing difficulties for the regions 
that adopt it and that will not be able to create a system with the 
others and at the same time effectively insert themselves into the 
context of the European and world economy. Such a prospect is 
asphyxiating for the Regions even if they were to claim for themselves 
the management, as is foreseen, of export and foreign trade policy, 
representing economic and productive entities that are decidedly 
inadequate with respect to the markets on which they must compete.
In light of these considerations, differentiated autonomy becomes a 
damage and a mockery for the same forces that promoted it. In the world 
in which we currently live, the timing of implementation of the measures 
is essential: this means that it is not certain that what was good or 
could have allowed advantages and benefits in the 80s of the last 
century is functional and appropriate today and above all that it is 
adequate for the new economic scenarios that have emerged. It follows 
that the differentiated autonomy project is today old, reckless and full 
of negative consequences, not only for the Regions that request it, but 
also for those that suffer from it and for the entire country system.
The stability pact signed by the government at the European level 
provides for a draconian policy of deficit containment and therefore a 
containment of public spending, with painful cuts to expenses aimed at 
satisfying social needs, since the budget is burdened by military 
spending, which will need to be increased until reaching 2% of GDP, by 
funding that bottomless pit that is constituted by the feeding of 
Ukrainian nationalism, which with ever greater rapacity and petulance, 
asks for resources, passing itself off as a dispenser of security for 
the peoples of Europe, when instead it manages and prepares their 
economic and social decline.

An action to restore public finances and abandon the policy of 
constantly increasing debt, in other words, a reversal of the trend, 
would require not only a rationalization of the expenses of the 
bureaucratic apparatus of the State through a profound reform of 
procedures, but also and above all the cutting of unproductive expenses, 
and among these especially those aimed at war which constitute a waste 
of precious and irreplaceable resources. A tax reform characterized by 
the introduction of an effective progressivity in the taxation of income 
could constitute the starting point for a serious policy to relaunch the 
economic and social development of the country.
While waiting to know what the government's orientations will be 
regarding the finalization of the new financial law, the verification of 
the signatures collected in the referendum on September 14, that is when 
the deadline for collecting signatures expires, will constitute a litmus 
test that will allow us to verify how much the country still relies on 
this government majority. The subsequent political campaign that will 
precede the referendum vote will also allow the opposition and the 
social formations that have signed the referendum question to test the 
strength of their alliance and to develop a program of future action 
that will see them opposed in content to this government majority.

The Editorial Staff

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/09/01/al-referendum-sullautonomia-differenziata/
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