RICERCA ITALIANA     

REGIONALISM-FEDERALISM BETWEEN COOPERATIVE ISSUES AND JUDICAL OF CONTROVERSIES

Università degli Studi di Palermo

Abstract

The reformation of Constitution's title V, part II is
experiencing an accomplishment path filled with difficulties and uncertainties partially due to the poor clearness of the new text and partially to the incompleteness of the Constitutional outline. Therefore, if on one hand the new architecture deriving from art. 114 Cost. seems to have introduced a polyarchic system in which all the constitutive elements of the Republic, from the Town Councils up to the State, are equally ordinate, on the other the Constitutional legislator has not provided adequate linking instruments between the diverse Government levels. This results in a legislative and Constitutional framework often operating upon the basis of conflicting principles, which have given their contribution in increasing the conflicts between State and Regions and have made frequent the turning to the Constitutional judge for solving related controversies.
There have been sharp interventions from the Constitutional Court which have contributed in making the system more rational and organic.
Moving from the statement that the Constitutional reform has introduced a polycentric Constitutional order based on equal ordination of the diverse government levels, the research intends to face the problematic points of crucial areas touched by the reform (State and regional legislative power, partition of the administrative power between centre and periphery, essential level of performances, system of local >>>

Principal Investigator

Giovanni PITRUZZELLA Università degli Studi di PALERMO

Research Objectives

On the whole the research intends to investigate the problematic issues that have emerged while putting into practise the reform of the Constitution's title v part II , with particular care given the influences that the Constitutional jurisprudence and the use of consensual instruments are bound to have on the ongoing federative processes. More, under the first profile rises the problem of the boundaries into which confine the arbitral function of the Constitutional Court and the definition of the point up to which the Constitutional interpretation may wander, to avoid trespassing the fence of political choices related to the building of the State form.
Therefore the research program has as a target the evaluation of : a) the possible State – Regions linking instruments operating at a inter-governmental level and those that should be prepared and that will operate at parliamentary level ; b) the system of guarantees and protections for local bodies; c) the partition of the administrative functions between territorial bodies; d) the essential level of the performances related to civil and social rights and the eventual interventions that the central State must assure to territories with lesser fiscal capacity per inhabitant; e) the delimitation of the State and Regions factual legislative competence; f) the actual role of the State law; g) the individuation of the sources competente to discipline the ordering of local bodies.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The research project concerns some of the issues left unsolved by the 2001 constitutional reform: at a time when the possibility of further interventions transforming regionalism is rising ( in fact, there are rumours of new constitutional revision laws that should weigh of this same matter), the tormented matter, long from being concluded, of the accomplishment of the Constitution Title V, underlines all the interpretative difficulties related to the systematic reconstruction of the new constitutional text . Many and relevant are the uncertainties that shine upon the complex of public powers. The new model of federalism-regionalism has brought, in fact, a deep revolution to the system of law's sources, powering, at least in its intentions, the precincts of the Regions legislative powers and, on the other hand, forcing a total revisiting of the State's legislative function. The Regions' statutory power has been strengthened (already affected by Constitutional Law n. 1/1999), as well as the legislative power, which seems to become the pivot of the normative production of the republican order in itself, even if there are still some crucial points unsolved regarding not only the listing of the matters ex art. 117 Cost., but also the correct definition of the relationship with the State's exclusive power. Equally problematic appears to be the question of the Regions' regulation power ex art. 117, subsection 6, still to be defined as related to the other regional sources >>>