Not only the Court of Auditors: from the Tar to the Council of State, the magistrates who block politics

The culture of control in Italy is confused with the often paralyzing and ineffective culture of administrative authorization. Thus the judges slow down, and sometimes stop, the action of the governments, with stamps

Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, had clear ideas: “We need to concentrate preventive and final control in an immovable magistrate”, he claimed as early as 1852, thinking of transforming the rusty Savoyard monarchy into a modern liberal regime. His death caught him a year before the new unitary state instituted the Court of Auditors which he advocated on the Napoleonic model. After 161 years, does Giorgia Meloni even challenge Cavour? She is not alone nor the only one. Political reporters recall Matteo Renzi’s fatal wrath against the Court of Auditors, the Accounting Office and even the Council of State, which responded to his government’s measures. No laces or entanglements. The sovereign people’s commissar must answer only to the general will which he is called upon to interpret. In the century of populism does Rousseau return while Montesquieu retires? Today’s bad teachers think so, but they continue to be victims of the past. What if instead we cast our gaze, mind and heart towards the future? We make a modest proposal, less provocative, undoubtedly less bloody than the one devised by Jonathan Swift: instead of magistrates, we give control over how taxpayers’ money is used to artificial intelligence. If he was able to find an antibiotic capable of eradicating bacteria believed to be invincible, if he won chess by immediately sacrificing the queen, to the incredulous amazement of Garry Kasparov, do you want him not to know how to unlock the Pnrr? An honest, easy, though not inexpensive, method.