He did not send him to tell. In his memorable speech to the Constituent Assembly of 29 May 1947, Emilio Lussu used all his frankness and irony to demolish those who, in the parliamentary halls and in the state buildings, would have wanted to cancel the special autonomies even before their birth, among all that of Sardinia. Rather than a constituent member, the glorious captain of the Sassari Brigade wore the role of a saber in that harangue, sometimes with a foil and sometimes with a scimitar. The climate in that classroom, says Lussu, was getting colder and more time passed, the more the front against autonomy was getting stronger. He gives names and surnames, with sarcasm and irreverence he indicates them as retrograde centralists, unable to look at that federalist recognition as a democratic conquest while respecting the legitimate expectations of the Peoples.

Centralist bureaucracy

The attack becomes circumscribed and punctual: "The central bureaucracy, - declaims Lussu - respectable but always bureaucracy and always central, has created a kind of federated oligarchy and has constituted a single anti-autonomous front, determined to fight, I will say so, up to the 'last unitary cartridge of the centralized explosive reserve'. Words of fire, despite the guilty delay with which the Sardinian Regional Council, criticized by Lussu, had lost the fleeting moment to accept the extension of the Sicilian Statute, already approved and much richer, to the Sardinian one. Seventy-four years later the words of Lussu resound prophetic in the Palazzo della Consulta where for months the Constitutional Judges have been called to rebalance the history, increasingly reaching out in favor of the enemies of the Special Autonomy of Sardinia.

Red thread

The red thread between Lussu's words and the Sardinian Region's appeal to the Constitutional Court regarding "Government of the territory" and "Protection of the Landscape" tough. The lawyers of the Region, Professor Benedetto Ballero and the lawyer Mattia Pani recall it in the final speeches: there is a clear hostility of the state apparatuses towards the Special Autonomy with the clear objective of ignoring rules of constitutional rank that they would like to annihilate with ordinary laws or insignificant administrative acts of the Rome offices. The reference is explicit to what is happening on regional law number 1 of 2021, the so-called "House Plan 2". The Government has ordered the total challenge, with a generic and superficial argument, wrong in rationale and logic. In practice - says the government - the law approved by the Regional Council falls entirely within the sphere of "economic and social reforms" which the same Regional Statute refers to the exclusive competence of the State. The palaces of Rome, which have never launched an economic and social reform in favor of Sardinia, now claim to argue that the Region cannot regulate the “Housing Plan” because it would damage a generic competence held exclusively by the State. All this with the aim of removing two exclusive competences from the Region: the Government of the Territory and the Protection of the Landscape.

The forgotten decree

The lawyer of Palazzo Chigi goes further: ignoring, or pretending, that the competence on the Protection of the Landscape, albeit not clearly written in the Statute, was then, instead, totally included in the Implementation Rules launched on May 22, 1975 with a Decree of the President of the Republic, number 480. This is the cornerstone of the dispute. That Decree of the Head of State is a norm peacefully superior on the hierarchical level to any ordinary law of the State. Violating it would mean canceling the constitutional value of the Statute and its implementing rules at its root. In practice it would mean razing the vote of the Constituent Assembly first and of the Parliament after they have recognized that “special” value to the autonomist statutes. It is the signatures at the bottom of that Decree that make us understand its authority not only institutional, but also, and above all, political.

From Moro to Andreotti

The Head of State Giovanni Leone signs, but the proposal is signed by Aldo Moro, President of the Council of Ministers, by Giulio Andreotti, Minister of Budget and Planning, Emilio Colombo, Minister of the Treasury, Bruno Visentini, Minister of Finance, Carlo Donat-Cattin, Minister of Industry, Giovanni Marcora, Minister of Agriculture and, above all, Giovanni Spadolini, Minister of Cultural Heritage and the Environment. It is precisely the latter that endorses Article 6 of the Implementation Rules of the Decree: "The powers already exercised by the central and peripheral bodies of the Ministry of Public Education and attributed to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Environmental as well as by central and peripheral bodies of other Ministries. The aforementioned transfer also concerns the drafting and approval of territorial landscape plans ». The final device of the law further strengthens the exclusive power of Sardinia: "The Region may avail itself of the collaboration of the state bodies responsible for the protection of natural and panoramic beauties for the drafting of the aforementioned plans". "He can," he must not. «Collaboration», not compulsory co-planning. This is the rule that the Government and the State would like to cancel with "reckless" constitutional challenges, in total contrast with the explicit rulings of the Constitutional Court itself which has repeatedly reaffirmed the competences of the Sardinian Region also in terms of landscape.

Powers transferred

Even then, as today, the resources allocated to Sardinia with that Decree were reduced to the bone, but the aim was to "transfer" to the Region a whole series of exclusive competences not punctually defined with the approval of the Statute. An act of amnesty, with the full value of the constitutional status of the law. And that, now, the State is attempting a "white coup" on the autonomy of Sardinia can be seen from some passages that go well beyond constitutional outrage. The example is striking when comparing the urban-landscape regulations approved by the Emilia Romagna Region, ordinary Region, see art. 19 bis, paragraph 1 ter of the Regional Law no. 23/2004, with those challenged by the Government against Sardinia, for example Article 19 of Regional Law No. 1 of 2021. The rules are the same, for Sardinia, a Region with a Special Statute, the government challenges it before the Constitutional Court, for Emilia Romagna has not raised a single point. It is the confirmation of the two weights and two measures. Sardinia, a Region with a Special Statute, mistreated and opposed, the ordinary Regions, with concurrent legislation, on the other hand, are favored and protected.

The precedent of the Court

The defensive memoirs of the Sardinian Region do not send him to say: "The appeal of the government is so all-encompassing that it aims to preclude any autonomous legislative power to the Region, with reference to urban planning and landscape protection". The claim is to put the Sardinian Region in check, committing it in fact, through the unhealthy theory (non-existent in any Italian Region) according to which every programming choice in Sardinia should be shared with the Ministry.

A constitutional madness, an unprecedented political and institutional attack. Moreover, the Constitutional Court on the matter has already expressed itself with sentence no. 51 of 2006: "The Region of Sardinia also has the power to intervene in relation to the profiles of landscape-environmental protection ".

The abc of the sources

The abc of the hierarchy of sources, or rather the pre-eminence of one rule over another, is totally upset by the Government, ignoring even the most explicit pronouncement of the Constitutional Court which, without frills, had already ruled in 2006: " implementation of the Special Statutes have a sure interpretative and integrative role of the same statutory expressions that delimit the spheres of competence of the Regions with special autonomy, and cannot be modified except through acts adopted with the procedure specifically provided for in the statutes, thus prevailing over the acts ordinary legislative ".

Unmodifiable rule

Therefore - says the Court - no one can modify the Implementing Rules with ordinary laws, which are valid as much as the Statute of constitutional rank. The act of appeal by the State is, therefore, a declaration of war on the autonomy specialty with damage not only to the constitutional prerogatives of Sardinia, but also on the economic level. The appeal alone has generated incalculable damage to the economy of the island, blocking billions of euros in investments, public and also, above all, private, all capable of generating a significant multiplier effect on development and employment. Now everything is blocked. The issue is not whether the rules of the House Plan are more or less acceptable, the question goes far beyond differences of opinion and politics: at stake is the power of the Sardinian Region, together with the Municipalities, to decide the Government of the Territory in your own home. Not really a secondary issue.

The centralist awakening

Lussu, concluding his speech to the Constituent Assembly for the approval of the part relating to the Regions with a Special Statute, did not hesitate to affirm: "It must be recognized that this reform, that this great reform, has awakened with a start not a few dormant centralist habits, indeed well asleep. And it is quick to pass from a state of alarm to a state of war: now - concluded Lussu - we are in full hostility ». Today, as then, the question is the freedom to govern one's own territory without hostile state invasions, in compliance with the Constitution and the Special Statute of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia.

(2.continue)

Mauro Pili

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