More than a sentence it is a slap. What yesterday the Council of State gave to the banker of Europe, who became President of the Council of Ministers, is a lesson in full-blown constitutional law. A decision without appeal. A milestone in the autonomy law of the Sardinian Region. The judges of the highest administrative assembly took care of re-establishing the hierarchy of rules, the relations between the State and the Region. The beating heart of the sentence is punctuated in point 17. A cornerstone of law capable of overturning the centralist mania of the Draghi-formed state: "The Autonomous Region of Sardinia, based on its Statute, has primary legislative competence in regulating landscape aspects- environmental protection of its territory, in this differentiating itself from the Regions to which this competence is not attributed, therefore the aforementioned Region being able to identify, with greater autonomy than the ordinary Regions, the areas not suitable for the establishment of wind power plants considering that the timely application of the lines state guide, vis-à-vis the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, meets the limit of competence inherent in the profiles of landscape protection ».

Autonomous Statute

Translated it means that in Sardinia there is still a constitutional law called the "Autonomous Statute" which assigns to the Region wider powers than those of the ordinary Statute. It is a pity that the State, and sometimes the Region itself, have forgotten to apply them. The object of the dispute this time is the aeolian invasion fought with appeals by the lords of the wind. They presented them in every meeting, first to the Regional Administrative Court and then, finally, to the Council of State. The objective was unscrupulous: to drive the mega wind turbines on the enchanted proscenium of the Basilica of Saccargia and in the Nuraghi Valley, in the area between Nulvi and Ploaghe. This time the lords of the usual multinational wind farm wanted to drive a forest of wind turbines 180 meters high, like sixty floors of a skyscraper, between one Nuraghe and another, between the Tombs of the Giants and breathtaking landscapes in the north of the island. An assault on the white weapon inflicting crucifixion on that exclusive and monumental landscape with a mass of cyclopean steel peaks close to the panorama of the most monumental of Sardinian basilicas, a stone's throw from the Doria Castle and the Malaspina Castle in Osilo. After the dry no of the Tar Sardinia yesterday came the one, without appeal, carved in the tables of environmental, landscape and above all constitutional law.

The primacy of the Region

A very harsh sentence, published shortly after noon, which not only reaffirms the primacy of the landscape and the identity of the historical and archaeological heritage of Sardinia, but strengthens it with a passage of the sentence that makes the legal area of the Region jump with joy. deployed in defense of the landscape of the island one of its advanced points, the lawyer Mattia Pani. It is he who wrote the autonomous defense of Sardinia before the judges of the high administrative court, reaffirming that constitutional assumption that leaves no room for interpretation: the Region has primary competence over the landscape. In practice, the one who decides on wind power is the Region, defining with its own legislative act and address where it is possible and where it is not possible to build a wind farm. The judges of the Council of State, however, went far beyond the most ambitious expectations of the regional defense. The sentence is a crossfire against the spasmodic and perennial cravings of the powerful wind lobby that lurked about the assault on Saccargia. The administrative judges, moreover, had somewhat deluded them. In the preliminary phase, the lords of the wind had asked for a suspension of the rejection of the Tar, the togates had rejected the request, but had pledged to fix the decision immediately on the merits: instead of the two or three canonical years just 8 months. And so it was.

Wind cheated

The result, however, was the exact opposite of what they expected. By doing the math well they could have avoided this precedent which instead marks the environmental and landscape law of Sardinia with a gigantic boulder. To capitulate under the caudine forks of the administrative judges of Rome are not only the interests of the number one of the wind giants in Italy, Erg, a multinational that has always been between wind and oil. To fall are all the wind cutters, limitless engines of a billionaire avalanche of wind interests. The sentence travels at the speed of light among the chats of the wind lords: a very heavy and unexpected blow. After all, there were not only them waiting for her. At Palazzo Chigi, Mario Draghi's temporary residence, for example, they would never have wanted to be in the condition of a blow without appeal like this.

The blitz of Draghi & C.

Not even two weeks ago, in fact, the Prime Minister, pushed by the patron of wind power par excellence, the Minister of the Environment Roberto Cingolani, had signed a motu proprio decree with which he approved that wind farm, literally not caring about the fact that the Region, the Superintendency, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and also the Sardinian TAR had decided to reject in no uncertain terms that wind attack on the monuments and enchanted landscapes of the island. Although the lords of the wind had already been denied the Sardinia Tar, they had decided not to give up in the unstoppable attempt to sacrifice those environmental and landscape assets in order to collect billions of wind incentives from the state. Draghi & Cingolani, kidnapped by the wind frenzy in the land of others, had decided to cancel with a single blow, through a decree of the Prime Minister, the first degree verdict of the Sardinian magistrates and raze the opinion against that settlement. , one hundred pages of motivation, from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

Wind finders

The purveyors of wind and state money had proposed to transform the existing "small" wind forest into a "large" park. An operation that they wanted to pass as a make-up of the plant that has stood in that scenario since 2004. In some passages they also thought of giving the Judges a glimpse of an environmental convenience in "modernizing" the old system. In reality, Erg's plan was a real assault on the landscape and the beating heart of Nuragic archeology and not only in northern Sardinia. According to the opinions of the Superintendence and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, there was at stake a myriad of identity and archaeological assets spread throughout the area, as if we were in front of an extraordinary open-air museum. The planners of the planned steel invasion had shamelessly argued: the project is a mere repowering and not a "new" wind farm.

The climb

The occupancy plan should have gone from 51 to 27 blades but the height would have tripled compared to previous wind turbines. The first 76-meter blades should now have become 180 meters, with the electric power destined to increase from 43 megawatts to 121.50. For Erg it was not only a question of tripling the heights of the previous steel blades, but the unconfessable goal was actually that of multiplying the earnings. From a collection of public incentives of six million euros with the old plant, the multinational would have come to pocket the stratospheric figure of 17 million euros a year, all state gifts to make those blades spin with the wind of Sardinia .

Billions & alms

Incentives intended to collect a total of 341 million euros from the ERG portfolio in twenty years. Some alms to the Municipalities and the "Landscape" marked forever, as the judges of the Council of State also write. The sentence of the Council of State, signed by the President Raffaele Greco, by the Councilors Luca Lamberti, Silvia Martino, Alessandro Verrico, and by the drafter Michele Pizzi, is a "Landscape Constitutional Charter of Sardinia". The jurisprudential principles referred to are translated into a law manual. The first assumption is for the European legislation: "The principle of community derivation of the maximum diffusion of energy plants from renewable sources can find an exception in the presence of the needs of health protection, landscape-environmental and urban planning of the territory". The reference to the State in matters of centralist taxation, then, is clear: «Legislative decree no. 387 of 2003 and the guidelines approved by Ministerial Decree of 10 September 2010, are addressed in their "entirety" to ordinary Regions ", as if to say, they do not apply" tout court "to special Regions such as Sardinia. The differentiation of Autonomy on the basis of constitutional provisions is said: «The competences of the Regions with a special statute and of the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano are reserved by virtue of the" salvation clause "». The reasoning then extends to energy: "The legislative competence of the Regions with special statute and of the autonomous Provinces must coexist with the state competence in the matter of environmental protection and with the competing one in the field of energy". As if to say, even on energy the state cannot do what it wants. The state guidelines on the matter - the Judges reiterate - are such on a general level, "but due to the primary competence attributed to a special Region or an autonomous Province, in the matter of landscape protection, the guidelines are inapplicable to the aforementioned special autonomies in their entirety ". Now, therefore, a sentence without appeal has fallen on the aeolian invasion, both private and of the state. With a lot of constitutional reminder: "In any case," specific and concrete constraints "by the State are not admissible with regard to special autonomies (sentence no. 275 of 2011)". The message of the Judges to Draghi & Ministri is clear: in Sardinia you cannot impose anything against the opinion of the Region in terms of landscape, environment and even energy. Council of State and Constitutional Court docet.

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