“Limiting the powers of the Court of Auditors is sacrosanct”. Talk to Cassese

“Without distinction of roles, the PA is paralyzed, other than the Pnrr. Meloni’s inconsistency? Blessed. Abuse of office? It doesn’t work”, the jurist and emeritus member of the Constitutional Court tells us

More than a subversion of the order, its recomposition. Where many denounce an assault on the institutions, Sabino Cassese he sees “a sacrosanct choice, which helps to put the relationship between public administration and controllers back in the right perspective”. And of course, “perhaps the manner didn’t help”, but net of the form, the substance is appreciable: “Very appreciable”. So no, the partial repeal of the concurrent control over the Pnrr by the Court of Auditors isn’t a wicked choice? “Absolutely not”, explains the dean of Italian jurists. “The controls that the Court of Auditors exercises, on the Pnrr and beyond, are a precious institution. But all the culture on the subject suggests that controls must have some characteristics. First of all, don’t be sweeping, but sample-based: otherwise they end up extending too much and going very little deep. Secondly, they shouldn’t be checks that are limited to paper, but that analyze the essence of things. Finally, they must be exercised as little as possible in a preventive or concomitant way: because this type of control too easily generates forms of co-management, with the result that the administrator feels either terrified or de-responsible. In the concomitant control there is the denial of the independence of the Court of Auditors, which should be the ‘eye of Parliament’, not the ‘guardian angel of employees’. And here we are at the basics: that is, we are at a healthy application of article 100 of the Constitution”.