Luca Zaia had promised it. As soon as the law was published in the Official Gazette, he would have set the autonomy machine for Veneto in motion. And so it was. Yesterday he sent a letter to the President of the Council Giorgia Meloni and to the Minister for Regional Affairs, Roberto Calderoli, to ask for the “resumption of the discussion for the implementation of Article 116, third paragraph of the Constitution”. The request, contained in five pages, is to “agree” on the times for the establishment of the negotiating table to obtain all 23 matters provided for by the Constitution, but starting from the nine in which the determination of Lep, the essential levels of performance to be guaranteed in all the Regions of the country, is not foreseen. These are the organization of justices of the peace, the international relations and with the EU of the Region; foreign trade; professions; Civil Protection; complementary and supplementary pensions; coordination of public finances and the tax system; savings banks and, finally, regional land and agricultural credit institutions. But the real surprise is that Zaia is asking to immediately discuss four other matters: labor policies, education, environmental protection and health protection. Matters, Zaia recalls in the letter, “on which there has already been convergence between the State and the Region in the preliminary agreement signed with the government on 28 February 2018”. What did those agreements say for the four “Lep” matters that Zaia wants to discuss immediately? For labor policies, for example, “stable financial resources” were assigned to Veneto to “guarantee a quality of services in support of work in line with the best European standards”. In the area of education, the preliminary agreement envisaged the assignment to Veneto of the “programming” of regional education “defining the relative allocation of staff”.
THE PASSAGE
The Region was also given the possibility of defining additional positions assigned on a fixed-term basis for each school year. The creation of a fund for school buildings into which current state resources would flow was also envisaged. As regards health, the preliminary agreement signed in 2018 between Luca Zaia and the then undersecretary Gianclaudio Bressa, envisaged the possibility of “removing specific spending constraints with particular regard to personnel management”. More funds and more hiring, in short. The governor of Veneto said he was convinced he could reach an agreement with the government quickly, by the end of the year. An acceleration compared to the longer times of the reform of the premiership which instead requires a double parliamentary passage and a probable confirmatory referendum. In the meantime, Zaia “stimulated” the Southern Regions and suggested they come forward, also saying he was willing to twin with a territory in the South to test the law and bring out any inequalities. Rowing against instead, in addition to the opposition Referendum Committee, there are always the five regions of the center-left (Tuscany, Emilia Romagna, Puglia and Campania led by the Democratic Party and Sardinia led by the M5S) that this week should formalize the birth of a Coordination that will have to draw up a shared and “unassailable” draft text for the abrogative referendum. But they will have to hurry since in ten days at most the president of Emilia Romagna Stefano Bonaccini will have to resign for the administrative processing necessary for his installation at the European Parliament on July 16.
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© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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