The Open Yard of Regionalism in Italy
Rather than shoring up the 2001 and 2009 reforms with new delegated laws and decrees, a profound debate should be opened
3' min read
3' min read
After the Constitutional Court's rejection (Sentence No. 192/2024) of about 70 per cent of the so-called 'Calderoli Law' on differentiated autonomy (Article 116, c. 3, of the Constitution), the Government reopened the game. On 19 May 2025, a new Bill was approved 'Delegation to the Government for the determination of essential levels of services'. These are the so-called Essential Levels of Performance (LEP), introduced with the reform of Title V of the Constitution in 2001: services related to civil and social rights that must be guaranteed uniformly throughout the national territory.
The government's move appears, at least formally, correct because the Court, in a ruling of historic significance, has clearly established that the determination of the Lep is the exclusive competence of Parliament, whereas the Calderoli law entrusted it almost entirely to decrees of the President of the Council of Ministers, i.e. administrative acts. The Calderoli law fully incorporated the conclusions of the technical-scientific committee chaired by Sabino Cassese, which had divided the 23 subjects subject to differentiated autonomy into two blocks: 14 considered 'Lep' and 9 excluded from this qualification. On this basis, the law envisaged a double track for the stipulation of agreements between the State and the Regions: an immediate go-ahead for 'non-Lep' subjects and a procedure subordinated to the determination of the Lep for the others. However, the Court overturned this approach, stating that differentiated autonomy cannot concern individual subjects, but specific functions. It also clarified that Lep-related functions can also exist within non-Lep subjects. The new legislative decree does not seem to address these two crucial issues; it only intervenes on 13 Lep subjects, excluding healthcare and completely ignoring the issue of Lep functions in non-Lep subjects; the guiding principles and criteria contained in the delegation are, as in the Calderoli law, vague and pleonastic.
The text - which has yet to begin its parliamentary process - leaves a bitter taste in the mouth; the risk that it will get bogged down in parliamentary debate is high. The eventual and precise definition of the Lep on the various decentralised functions (about 500) should be followed by the determination of the standard requirements, i.e. the resources for the Lep. This is a very complicated game, also from a technical point of view, which would have to be linked with the financing mechanisms of ordinary statute regions ('symmetrical' federalism) established by Delegated Law 42/2009 and which are only recently finding substance in some draft legislative decrees, as illustrated by Minister Giorgetti at a hearing on the implementation of fiscal federalism on 9 July. However, more than 20 years have passed since the 2001 and 2009 reforms and, in the meantime, the 'polycrisis' has profoundly transformed the national and international context. In an era marked by structural changes in economic and political systems, driven by a new global geopolitical scenario, a question emerges forcefully: does the model of regionalism designed by the Title V reform still make sense? That reform incorporated the changes that had emerged since the 1990s, in a Europe that was being redesigned under the impetus of globalisation and the paradigm of efficient markets. It was the time of 'competitive federalism' and growth 'from below', entrusted to market competition and between territories, with a state that was withdrawing from defining major national strategies or missions.
Today the clock of the global economy, of multipolarism, of the relationship between state and market turns in the opposite direction from the 1990s. In the face of challenges such as climate change, demographic ageing, labour, industrial policy and welfare, are we sure that strengthening the leading role of the regions (as envisaged in the 2001 reform) is the most effective response? This was also Minister Giorgetti's message at the beginning of his hearing, when he pointed out that bringing fiscal federalism to fruition is a far from simple objective today. Perhaps more than shoring up the 2001 and 2009 reforms with new delegated laws and decrees, a profound debate should be opened (both in universities and in politics) on regionalism today.
Full Professor of Political Economy, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
