Bringing differentiated regionalism to fruition is anything but easy. Those who have tried know this well, from the current group leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate, Francesco Boccia, when he was minister for regional affairs and autonomies in the Conte II government, to Senator Maria Stella Gelmini, when she held the same position in the Draghi government. This time too, the road to the implementation of Calderoli’s reform is far from smooth. If it were ever possible to define the essential performance levels (Lep), which constitute the blank delegation of the present reform, the primary question would become how to reconcile the consequent transfer of resources for the regions requesting greater autonomy and equalization for the others, in a context of public finances in trouble like ours. In any case, there is a reason, so to speak, non-technical, which adds difficulty to the difficulties. It concerns a kind of squinting into the subject of political controversy. In fact, one has the impression that we are increasingly talking about differentiated regionalism (and its effects) as if we were talking about fiscal federalism (and its effects).
Instead, these are two different, although related, issues. Differentiated regionalism is a third possibility between the regions with ordinary statute and those with special statute. Thanks to it, the regions that want greater autonomy in the regulation and management of matters of shared competence can negotiate it with a bilateral agreement with the State. The outcome of the differentiation would therefore be the presence, alongside the regions with ordinary statute and special statute, of regions with ordinary statute which have signed specific agreements with the government for the transfer of further functions. Fiscal federalism, on the other hand, is the fuel in the engine of regionalism. Of all regionalism, not just of the regions that possibly ask for greater autonomy. The acrimony of the debate on regionalism, incomprehensible in tone rather than in arguments, and the economic events following 2009, the year of approval of the law enabling fiscal federalism, have so far made it impossible to definitively implement the principle of fiscal responsibility which is the basis of the constitutional reform of 2001, to the point of inducing the “federalist” political bodies, or what remains of them, to reverse the factors and arrive at the broader and more general theme of fiscal federalism through the more restricted and specific theme of differentiated autonomy.
In essence, the second seems to be used also as a tool to get to the first. In this way, however, with a highly ideologized debate like the one that is developing on the subject, there is a risk of wasting the opportunity twice, to the detriment of both. Differentiated autonomy concerns the possibility for the regions to organize and manage certain functions themselves, weighing their own capabilities and their adequacy as territorial government bodies, as well as the needs of their territory. It is a challenge for all, not only for those most confident in their resources (read: the North) but also for those of the South. Which South, then, we should ask ourselves. Puglia, for example, in the last twenty years has taken up this challenge and has developed a model of economic development that has little to do with the usual image of the North/South divide.
In 2018, Campania had given a mandate to President Vincenzo De Luca to start negotiations to benefit from differentiated autonomy.
A discussion on the topic that makes it only a cash reason therefore risks being a missed opportunity to ask ourselves what level of administrative capacity has been achieved, can be achieved and wants to be achieved, both in the North and in the South; which model of division of competences manages to reconcile freedom and responsibility to do one’s own thing on the one hand, and solidarity towards other regions on the other; what idea do we have of the distribution of political and administrative functions, and not just resources, between levels of government?
Secondly, talking about differentiated autonomy as if it were fiscal federalism risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Still in 2021, twenty years after the constitutional reform of 2001 and 15 after the approval of the enabling law for the implementation of fiscal federalism, the parliamentary commission that deals with it wrote that the implementation of the law had only occurred in part and « the process aimed at the complete affirmation of the principles of fiscal federalism has so far been characterized by delays, uncertainties, partial solutions and repeated deferrals”. In particular, the overcoming of derivative finance at regional level and the complete definition of LEPs remain unimplemented. The differentiated autonomy planned by Minister Calderoli also serves this purpose: in addition to designing the procedure for agreements between the regions and the government, it takes the bull of fiscal federalism by the tail and imposes that the recognition of further matters is associated with the determination of the essential levels of performance and the definition of equalization tools. In short, he tries to achieve the fulfillment of fiscal federalism through differentiated autonomy. Ultimately, the rules on the financing of differentiated autonomy make fiscal federalism a leap forward, and for this reason too an open discussion would help not to forget the objectives that should be at the basis of this, namely that of the correspondence between revenues and expenses and control of public spending.
Objectives which, together with and not as an alternative to fiscal solidarity, characterize an effective and democratic regional model, whether differentiated or not. Talking about autonomy as the management of matters, and not just as the management of resources, would be useful for a serious discussion both on the different adequacy between the regions and on the completion of fiscal federalism. An almost impossible comparison, as long as the tone is the one we are witnessing these days
