Sardinia Region - Italian State: when the conflict of jurisdiction becomes an instrument of indirect government of the territory

Rather, and this is the meaning of my speech, I wonder what happened to that " Republic of Autonomies , articulated on different levels of government with constitutionally guaranteed autonomy", given that, apparently, we seem to be still far away, and perhaps this was never the intention of the legislator in 2001, from being able to talk in terms of a total equality between local authorities and between the latter and the State. All the more so when we consider that although the new formulation of Article 117 of the Constitution was conceived with the primary purpose of guaranteeing greater efficiency in the action of public powers through the so-called allocation of functions on the basis of the principle of vertical subsidiarity, however, the 'objective, presented itself right away, and is expected today, in all its practical remoteness since, in fact, it would seem not to allow any derogation from the rigid division of competences and would even seem to "betray" regional competence through the instrumental use the control of reasonableness and proportionality.

Well. There seems to be no doubt that the implementation of the new article 117 of the Constitution has always been complex and questionable, especially in a very delicate area such as that of the division of powers between the State and the Regions. That it is necessary, equally and as a priority, to start a new process of constitutional revision appears today in all its necessity.

In the meantime, because, whatever one may say, the Constitutional Court itself, requested on this point countless times, betrays a certain interpretative-hermeneutic difficulty in finding the meeting point between state law and regional law not so much and not only in matters of concurrent legislation, but also and above all between laws attributed exclusively to the competence of the State and other regional matters. Therefore, because, lacking at the base valid forms of "political-institutional compensation" useful to settle the disputes that arise in advance, one inevitably ends up entrusting the "highest judgment" of the robes, and paradoxically, the same government of the territory by entrusting them in fact a role that would seem to go beyond the specific jurisdictional functions by promoting an “intervention” according to the rule of law that should remain relegated to the status of mere eventuality and residuality.

Finally, because, unfortunately, today it seems to be attributed to the Constitutional Court the task of compensating for the innumerable operational difficulties of the Parliament (completely deprived of its role) to which only the task of identifying the correct line of demarcation of the functions would be attributed. as part of the attribution of competences between the State and the Regions. If this, therefore, is not a political exercise of judicial power, legitimized and permitted by the ruling class itself unable to govern itself, then you tell me what else it is.

The management, so to speak "in a cooperative form", of the division of competences between the two levels of government of the territory cannot become, and unfortunately it seems to have become, the privileged ground of the power of intervention of the Judicial Body since, thus allowing, we end up confirming by conclusive facts a regime of conduct aimed at excluding the legislative power of a regional nature from the effective management of the power that would be proper to it due to the attitude of connatural deference of the Judicial Body itself towards the Roman political decision-maker, justified by the need not to destabilize the desired and guaranteed institutional set-up, even if it is not seen in many cases as, by a state legislator who has become increasingly approximate and incoherent.

Is this what we want? If so, let's not complain about the consequences. If this is the case, let's stop stubborn in wanting to solve from the outside, and paradoxically, the "disservices" connected to the exercise of our autonomic principles only due to the inability expressed by the Local Government even in enforcing its own Specialty.

If it had not been understood, and I doubt it, the Region of Sardinia would seem to continue to want to "float" in the unspoken, but basically rather convenient, conventionalism of hetero-referentiality, effectively allowing Other Powers to exercise the Government of the territory. Let us take back our autonomy or let us abandon it forever.

Giuseppina Di Salvatore - Lawyer, Nuoro