Autonomy, from quorum to the risk of inadmissibility: all the unknowns of the referendum

Not only the 500,000 popular signatures to be collected by September. The front of the no to the differentiated autonomy is also about to mobilise five regions administered by the centre-left, which should formalise the referendum request within the month. It starts tomorrow with Campania, to continue with Emilia Romagna (already on Tuesday) and then Sardinia, Puglia and Tuscany. But on the way for the oppositions there is not only the quorum hurdle, for which the no vote should obtain almost double the number of votes that all the oppositions united obtained in the 2022 politics (almost 12 million additional votes), but also that of the admissibility of the referendum itself.

The Calderoli law is linked to the budget law and therefore could fall within the case of laws for which the Constitution precludes recourse to abrogative referendum. For this reason, along with the abrogative question tout court, the five regions should also present another one - in common - that goes to affect in a selective manner the contents of the law, aiming at the heart of the measure: the Lep, the essential levels of performance. The M5s, which expresses the governor of Sardinia, even proposes an agreement on five questions: the original one plus four partial ones, to give citizens the chance, "should the first one be declared inadmissible, to express their clear opposition to all significant points" of the measure.

As for the second major hurdle of the quorum, the game is uphill: 25.5 million citizens, 50 plus one of the eligible voters, must be brought to the polls. And the centre-right will certainly bet on non-voting to add its numbers to those of the abstentionists. In the last thirty years, the quorum was only reached in 2011 on the referendum for public water and against nuclear power. The oppositions are therefore called to a great mobilisation, on pain of - as the leader of Azione Carlo Calenda continues to predict - failure and a double gift to Giorgia Meloni. Also because the South, the part of Italy most opposed to autonomy, is also traditionally the one with the lowest turnout.