On Wednesday 26 June, the President of the Republic Mattarella promulgated the law on differentiated autonomy. According to this provision, Regions and autonomous Provinces will be able to request “their own rules” on many 23 subjects: from health protection to energy, from transport to education, plus 14 subjects defined by the essential performance levels (Lep).
A project that shatters Italy, differentiates rights according to place of birth, increases the already existing inequalities between the North and South of the country, puts services and protections for citizens at risk. TO Pino GesmundoCGIL confederal secretary, we asked for a reflection on this reform carried out by the government.
Differentiated autonomy is law. Can it represent an opportunity for the industrial sector and the development of the country?
Let’s not joke: this measure will have the exact opposite effect, weakening our industrial and productive structure even further. Moreover, the idea of delegating powers to the Regions developed in Italy at the end of the 1980s. A world completely different from today’s, divided into very rigid blocks of influence and with very strong national industrial systems. Globalization had not yet taken hold: the development model was strongly guided by national policies and in our country significant public resources were invested in the South to shorten the existing economic distances.
What happened then?
In that context, Umberto Bossi’s League imposed a cultural model based both on the fact that public money should finance more of the North of the country and that decisions should not be taken by the State but by local communities. That idea also contaminated left-wing politics, causing it to make a mistake, producing the amendment to Title V of the Constitution. From that moment on, territorial inequalities began to increase again and, thanks to the privatization of public shareholdings which had become protagonists in designing industrial policies in Italy, through the system of business incentives, spending shifted mainly towards the North, abandoning the South to a long decline.
So let’s get to today…
And today we have to say that implementing that design is totally wrong. The world is completely different, the economy has become globalized, competition takes place on a continental and no longer national scale, the spheres of influence are different. While the world competes on a continental scale, we delegate fundamental aspects of development to the Regions. A real madness.
Isn’t this view excessively pessimistic?
Not at all. We can understand what will happen by looking at what has already happened. Having delegated health to the Regions has produced 20 different regional systems, with different levels of quality of the health system. The delegation of fundamental matters for the country’s development will produce even worse effects, because no Region, not even the most developed ones in the North, will be able to compete with a system in which the challenge is between continents.
An example?
The urgency of abandoning the use of fossil fuels and achieving the environmental transition necessary to prevent global warming will impose radical choices in the development of new technologies. Assigning the production, transport and distribution of energy to the Regions will prevent them from competing on new technologies, a field in which even national policies are insufficient. Not being able to compete on new energy production models, based on renewable sources or on neutral technologies from the point of view of carbon emissions, will condemn our country to have a higher energy cost than our competitors, putting our industrial system is out of business.
Here too: isn’t this a too pessimistic view?
No, and I’ll explain it with an example. In recent years we have delegated hydroelectric power plants to the Regions, which are fundamental for the production of clean energy. Since then, punctual planning has been lacking, producing a substantial stalemate in the current hydroelectric concessions. While waiting to decide what to do, also on the basis of European rules, the individual Regions have not been able to create conditions of certainty on the future of the current concessions, effectively resulting in a total block of investments. The result is that power plants produce less and are more obsolete, significantly delaying the decarbonization process. In the coming years there will be choices that will have to be made at a European level and we will present ourselves at that event divided into 20 Regions with different ideas, projects and programs, condemning the entire country to marginality because we will lag behind technological innovation necessary.
On energy it is a mistake, but on the other matters delegated to the Regions?
On all matters related to the new development model determined by the energy transition and digital transformation, the competition will take place on a continental scale. Let’s think about the investments made by the United States or Asian countries, China in the lead. We, who would need decisions taken at the European Community level, also and above all to identify the resources necessary to support the transformations underway, delegate the matters to the individual Regions. We are going in the exact opposite direction to that of the world.
Other examples?
In the era of the global internet, of artificial intelligence, of servers and the cloud, of mega computers, we entrust the organization of communication to the Regions: in a challenge that concerns the continents, we will travel in no particular order. Or we delegate the ‘large transport and navigation networks’ to the Regions. The word ‘big’ should already make you think: throughout the world, maritime transport operators can be counted on the fingers of one hand and have enormous power. From those subjects we will present ourselves as individual Regions: I fear that the large mercantile shipping companies that determine world trade do not even know what the Italian Regions are. The same goes for ports and airports. To increase or consolidate container traffic, which is fundamental for the global economy, we will have small regions discussing with global giants.
Differentiated autonomy therefore risks being a boomerang for the entire country.
More than a risk, it is a certainty. We are in the presence of epochal transformations, digitalization and energy transition, which require immense investments in innovation, research and development. And U.S? We transfer these matters to the Regions, including education. But can we hope to have an opportunity to be able to preserve the industrial apparatus – we are still the second European country for industrial production – by breaking up the fundamental assets? Not realizing that we are carrying forward a process that began 30 years ago with a world completely different from today’s and that competition today takes place on a continental and no longer national level, is the exact opposite of what is needed. As a country we should convince Europe to prepare common industrial policies, precisely to prevent production from moving to other continents, and above all to identify the huge resources, in Europe we are talking about 500 billion per year for ten years, at a European level, necessary to support the ongoing transformations.
The government has therefore taken on a great responsibility. At this point, what can citizens and civil society do?
First of all, we would need a government that is willing to open a discussion with the social partners and the productive world, see the criticisms raised with increasing frequency by Confindustria to the project of differentiated autonomy, and not anchored to ideological flags born in a completely outdated past. For this reason we will have to oppose this project with determination, even going so far as to promote a referendum that can make Italian citizens pronounce on the inadequacy of the government’s choices with respect to today’s needs.
