Calderoli: the Autonomy bill will change. More room for action for Parliament, the League seeks a compromise with FdI

ROME. More space for the role of parliament in defining agreements between the state and the region and in formulating the essential levels of performance (Lep), the minimum standards of public services to which citizens are entitled. The bill on autonomy will change. This was announced by the Minister of Regional Affairs Roberto Calderoli in the Senate hall, during the question time: “The Government is certainly not insensitive to the many questions posed in the parliamentary debate and in the hearings and will make its own some amendment proposals aimed at improving the contents of the bill”.

On what points? Some anticipation comes from the morning meeting of the Constitutional Affairs commission of Palazzo Madama which is examining the project of differentiated autonomy. The areas of intervention would be three, reports those who participated in the session: the role of the two chambers in the Lep match; greater parliamentary involvement in the agreements between the state and the regions that will ask for more autonomy; the possibility of making future agreements reversible, a process made cumbersome in the current text of the bill.

The changes will aim above all at a compromise with the allies of the Brothers of Italy, who are more cautious on the path to differentiated autonomy. Giorgia Meloni’s party presented 27 amendments to the text and found “minister Calderoli’s great willingness to reason and discuss the merits”, guaranteed the president of the Senate’s constitutional affairs commission, Alberto Balboni. Perhaps Calderoli “will allow himself to propose, we will see, some slight technical reformulation – added the FdI senator – but the stakes that we have set politically remain”. Among these “the amendment which requires the definition of the essential levels of performance through a legislative process of the parliament, and not with government acts”, Balboni specified to La Stampa is fundamental. Another proposal from the Melonians asks that an authorization from the chambers be needed to start negotiations on some subjects such as energy, school and transport networks. Again, the appeal to parliament for greater decision-making power in defining the agreements.

On this, Minister Calderoli’s openness does not seem wide-ranging. In any case, the parliament – explained the minister – will not be allowed to restrict the subjects on which the regions can ask for autonomous management, except on a case-by-case basis. For the Northern League minister, the Charter provides for twenty-three, and twenty-three must be the competences that the governors will be able to bring under their own administration: “It is not permitted by ordinary law – specified Minister Calderoli in the classroom – to set preventive limits on the contents of the agreements, relating to matters specifically indicated in the Constitution. Parliament will deal with them, when it examines the individual hypotheses, first with the guidelines and then with the final vote by absolute majority”.

The possibility (rejected) of setting limits to the agreements was also mentioned in the letter of resignation, last week, of the four resigning members of the Committee for the Lep, the former president of the Constitutional Court Giuliano Amato and Franco Gallo, the former minister for the Public Function Franco Bassanini and the former president of the Council of State Alessandro Pajno. The questions of senators Andrea Giorgis (Pd) and Giuseppe De Cristoforo (Avs) started precisely from the choice of the four jurists.