The Region against the State before the Constitutional Court. This time the point of contention is the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) authorizations issued by the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MASE), starting from February 17, for three different agrivoltaic plants that would insist in the municipalities of Siamaggiore, Solarussa, Tramatza, Zeddiani, Zerfaliu. The Regional Council has decided to raise the conflict of attributions.
The Roman offices, it was written in the opinions, consider the Sardinian law on suitable areas inapplicable.
The Ministry's General Directorate for Environmental Impact Assessment (as anticipated by L'Unione Sarda) issued a positive assessment without even checking whether the project under examination from time to time "fell within an area identified as suitable by regional law 20/2024", a priori excluding the application of the law voted by the Regional Council, deeming "any regulatory provision of regional rank to be illegitimate".
According to the Todde Council, Mase "has therefore not only behaved in a manner contrary to the legislative powers attributed by the Special Statute of Sardinia, in particular in the areas of urban planning, construction and landscape protection (including agriculture and forests), the production and distribution of electricity, but also considers any provision in this area from any Italian region in identifying areas suitable or unsuitable for the installation of renewable energy production plants to be illegitimate".
The General Directorate for Environmental Assessments of the Mase does not maintain that regional law 20 is not relevant to the subject matter of its assessments «but excludes its applicability a priori. A State body, therefore, does not take into account the principle of separation of powers, which is the basis of every democratic system, disapplies an existing law and takes upon itself the power that belongs to a constitutional body – the Consulta, precisely – anticipating its potential censorial effects».
The President of the Region Alessandra Todde, in agreement with the Councilor for the Environment, Rosanna Laconi, has given the Regional Attorney's Office the mandate to promote the case before the Constitutional Court, to ask "that it is not up to the State to disapply regional laws, nor to evaluate their constitutional legitimacy and to reiterate that the Region has exclusive legislative power in matters of urban planning, including the right to protect the landscape and environment, the regulatory power in matters of production and distribution of electrical energy, as well as construction, in matters of agriculture and forestry, with consequent protection, as provided for in Article 3 of the Statute".
The Region also requests that it "be recognized as having the power to regulate the definition of areas suitable for the production and installation of plants from renewable energy sources (...) and therefore to cancel the Mase provisions that approved the plants".