According to the words of President Christian Solinas, "the Government's commitment to remove the economic imbalances deriving from insularity, now also enshrined in the text of the bill approved unanimously by the Council of Ministers, bears witness to the will to give due attention to the rights of the islands that have been ignored and denied for too long". Nothing quaestio, the reference in the bill on Differentiated Autonomies was there. But in what would this appeal be substantiated in practice? How, in the context of the specific regulatory provision of reference, should insularity find its actualization in order to become concretely appreciable for the Sardinian people in terms of benefits? In what way, wanting to understand better, "insularity", inserted in that specific regulatory context, should pass from its condition of "significant" (i.e. from the mental representation that everyone can have) to that of "signified" (i.e. its expression concrete by filling itself with contents)?

Minister Calderoli's proposal on differentiated autonomy would seem to propose the intention of conferring wider and more intense powers on the regions in relation to some specific competences, in compliance with the principles dictated by the Constitutional Charter. But it would probably be appropriate to understand each other by asking ourselves more: are there differences between the concept of differentiated autonomy and the concept of regional autonomy sic et simpliciter considered?

The question seems to be far from trivial. First of all because, by regional autonomy, we generally mean the potential of the various regions to "support themselves" autonomously within a broader, more articulated and complex state system. Therefore why, consequently, such regions would have, as in fact they already have, the power to legislate and take decisions on public policy matters concerning their geographical perimeter of reference with the intention of pursuing the objective of ensuring greater democratic participation and a more efficient management of local resources: by way of example, the Lombardy Region, as the region of maximum managerial efficiency (the circumstance certainly cannot be denied), has the power to manage its own health system, being equipped with a plan organizational and "planning" autonomous with respect to the central government to offer a more prompt response to the needs of its population and to adopt more effective health policies. Also because, and this is the other side of the coin, regional autonomy can also collide with the interests of the central government: a circumstance, the latter, which takes shape when regional policies come into conflict with those since, clearly, the decentralization of power can also lead, as it often seems to happen, to inequalities between the richest and least developed regions. Lastly because, even in the simplified and already existing context of regional autonomies, it is fundamental, and not always easy to achieve, to guarantee a constant balance between the different regional autonomies and the indispensable principle of national cohesion. The latter element which could indeed be seriously compromised in the hypothesis of concrete expression of the bill on Differentiated Autonomies although supplemented by the generic (because generic at present it would appear to be) reference to the principle of insularity.

The reason is soon said. To begin with, although regional autonomy and differentiated autonomy are both (note that they are parallel) forms of political autonomy granted to the regions in a country, the first, and more correctly, would seem to refer to the ability of the regions to "manage themselves" in matters of government local, such as the organization of public services, land management, culture and education since, in this sense, all regions enjoy the same levels of autonomy and have the same powers and responsibilities, while the second, however, i.e. differentiated autonomy, would refer to, and consequently take the form of, the granting of a higher level of autonomy to specific regions which would appear to have (and the circumstance should be subjected to analytical examination) different needs and characteristics compared to the others.

Translated in a nutshell: the implementation of the Calderoli bill, on balance, even with the addition of the reference to insularity, which really is not clear in which way, according to the simple statement of the concept, should find a guarantee within the various "autonomies" of a self-referential nature, would ensure, to only some regions, greater powers in certain sectors, such as education or health, compared to other regions which, indeed, given the different levels of development, would remain "behind" in full violation of the aforementioned principle of national cohesion. In a nutshell, we could say that even if regional autonomy, however understood, even ideally, could take the form of an important "governance" tool to be suitable, on the level of ideological abstraction, to achieve the improvement of democratic participation and the management of local resources, at present, on a purely practical level, would not be such, lacking the basic conditions, i.e. the homogeneity of the starting conditions, of the individual and potential territorial autonomies.

To want to think differently, paradoxically, one would end up violating the principle of the unity of the State: growing together to grow well by bridging the geographical, structural and managerial gap of the Regions that present the most critical issues. Only once the aforementioned objective has been achieved could one reason about the need to achieve more evolved forms of managerial decentralization, even if, to tell the truth, the need would inevitably diminish if all government energies were really directed towards achieving conditions of equal development of the different regional entities. All the more so when such an objective was in line, as it is in fact in line, with the development plan imposed by the granting of PNRR funds for southern Italy. With all due respect to those who want differentiated autonomy.

Differentiated regionalism cannot be established by-passing the preventive theme of solving the problems that have characterized the broadly understood regional systems of the North - South gap (zeroing the gap is presented as fundamental for the growth of the country), to which it is strictly attributable the correct allocation of resources (unfortunately up to now not yet equal, as far as it seems to be understood), in such a way as not to impose a competitive regionalism and remain (as requested by the Constitutional Court) in the contextual context of a cooperative regionalism.

On balance, having included the reference to insularity in a provision aimed at differentiating autonomistic contexts, as well as appearing as a contradiction in terms (at least so it would seem in the absence of more precise indications of a content nature), would seem to nullify its content , compromising its actual implementation. The autonomistic requests of the regions with ordinary statute are welcome, but certainly not now, since the juridical and administrative context useful for guaranteeing a uniform implementation would seem to be lacking: unity in diversity, but still and in any case unity. One cannot disregard an overall vision, except at the cost of wanting to assume the responsibility (the Government, of course) of undertaking a legislative and executive phase in which the unity of the sorting.

Josephine Di Salvatore

(Lawyer – Nuoro)

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