We receive and publish a contribution from the regional councilor for Local Authorities, Finance and Urban Planning Quirico Sanna.

“Dear Director, I would like to take advantage of your kindness and the authority of your newspaper to make a subdued reflection on what was ruled by the Excellency Constitutional Court with sentence no. 257/2021.

'.. The sentence of the Constitutional Court 257/2021, was adopted with the affirmation of the illegitimacy of the regional law as it stated that the Region was obliged, with the 2007 Agreement and then with the implementing regulations of 2013 and 2018, approved by the Regional Councils of the time, to carry out, for the revision of the PPR, a co-planning with the Ministry: not having done it consequently led to the declaration of illegitimacy of art. 1 of law 21/2020, on the interpretation of the PPR legislation.

The ruling also recalls that in these acts, signed by the Region, it is also envisaged that the adjustment of the PPR must take place in an organic and not episodic way, and that this is also affirmed by the regional laws that dealt with this problem, including LR 4 / 2009, on the first floor of the house.

The Court's decision is therefore based almost exclusively on the failure to respect the principle of loyal cooperation that would derive from the so-called 2007 Agreement, and on the new principle agreed with the Region of the so-called “organic revision”, albeit in derogation from constitutional norms.

However, the ruling on the existence or otherwise of an exclusive legislative power of the Region of Sardinia in the matter of landscape protection, which had been affirmed by the Constitutional Court with sentence no. 51/2006, according to which "it is clear that the Region of Sardinia also has the power to intervene in relation to landscape-environmental protection profiles in the exercise of its statutory powers in the field of building and urban planning".

Today's decision does not even mention the sentence 308/2013 - mentioned only in the factual part, as recalled by the Region - according to which "From the examination of the relevant state regulations, also considered in their chronological succession, it is therefore clearly the non-existence of a joint planning obligation, for the landscape assets identified by art. 17, paragraph 3, letter g), of the technical standards and especially for the so-called wetlands.

Therefore, the Region could well, in the exercise of its primary legislative competence, intervene on the landscape regulation of the aforementioned assets, also through an authentic interpretation rule, not being bound to involve, either in advance or subsequently, the competent state bodies ".

This last statement, therefore - without however the Court having recalled this previous decision in the legal part, to disagree with it or to confirm it - was contradicted by the current decision for the reasons indicated above, albeit with reference not to the wetlands but to the coastal strip.

The sentence also recalled art. 6 of the implementation rule of the Special Statute, but did so in a different perspective from what is indicated by the Region, that is as a rule attributing the power of approval of the landscape plan, specifying however that the Region, with the 2007 agreement and with the subsequent acts, he had wanted to implement it, through a co-planning with the Ministry, and not exclusively.

In any case, the decision of the Court now derives a discipline that equates Sardinia to the ordinary Regions so that, if Sardinia wants to continue to reaffirm its role as a Region with a Special Statute, it must be able to overcome the current concrete conditions on which the Court has based its decision, and therefore comes with the Ministry to a modification of the Agreement of 2007 and the subsequent technical regulations, and also manages to open an interlocution with the Government for the completion of the implementation rules of the Special Statute, of which for many years we speak without having reached any conclusion, especially when, according to the Constitution, new competences are attributed to some ordinary Regions, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia and Romagna.

The other Special Regions, in fact, whose Statutes were approved by the Constituent Assembly in 1948, such as that of Sardinia, namely Sicily, Valle d'Aosta and Trentino Alto Adige, all have in their Special Statutes, concerning landscape protection , an express attribution of exclusive legislative power, and are not subject to any landscape planning with the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, not even for those few assets that are indicated by the code as compulsory co-planning for the ordinary Regions, and as instead, for effect of the 2007 Agreement, Sardinia is obliged to make Sardinia, albeit in an even more general and all-encompassing way than many Regions with ordinary Statutes ... ".

Quirico Sanna

Councilor for Local Authorities, Finance and Urban Planning of the Sardinia Region

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