Three years later, not much has changed: the principle of insularity has been enshrined in the Constitution (final approval by Parliament at the end of July 2022), but not in concrete policies favoring Sardinia. "During this period, the gap with the rest of Italy has, if anything, widened, not narrowed," emphasizes Michele Cossa, one of the historic leaders of the battle over insularity: "But if we don't address this problem," continues the representative of the Reformists, "we will never overcome our development gap."
To relaunch the issue, Cossa and Aldo Salaris, the party's coordinator, brought together the remaining three Planning councilors in Cagliari to attend the presentation of the new report from the Bruno Leoni Institute, which in previous years had quantified the economic disadvantage of the island due to its geographical conditions at approximately 9 billion euros per year.
This time, the Institute focused on the policies implemented after Parliament's final vote on insularity, noting that they were not influenced by the new constitutional valorization of the principle. Indeed, in the meantime, the management of the NRRP has proven to be a major missed opportunity in this regard: "Almost €4 billion has been allocated to Sardinia," Carlo Stagnaro emphasized, "but almost all of the resources allocated relate to measures enacted at the national level, which have nothing to do with insularity ."
Raffaele Paci, Giuseppe Fasolino, and Giuseppe Meloni, Budget Councilors in the Pigliaru, Solinas, and Todde Administrations respectively, agreed on the need to relaunch the island issue with a bipartisan mobilization: "When we talk about a €9 billion gap to recover, it becomes an impossible battle without Sardinian national unity," said the former, while Fasolino recalled "the spirit of 2018," when the insularity committees took inspiration from the Reformers' initiative to open up to contributions from all political parties. Current Councilor Meloni assured that "starting in September, the issue of rebalancing Sardinia's disadvantages will be one of the main commitments of our Administration."
Aldo Salaris offered the administration led by Alessandra Todde an example to emulate: "A few days ago, the Council of Ministers approved a provision implementing the Sicilian Special Statute, which expands the fiscal autonomy of the other island. If we want to gain new scope for self-government, we too must follow the path of implementing provisions ."