Regions

REGIONS. - The new Italian constitutional Charter proclaims that the Republic is "one and indivisible," but "recognizes and promotes local autonomies" and among them the regional ones (art. 115 ff.). The "regional State" thus stands on an intermediate plane between the federal State and the State with simple administrative decentralization, since the regions are recognized as autonomous bodies with their own functions.

The regions undoubtedly have constitutional relevance because they are provided for, regulated and guaranteed by the Constitution, and also with the possibility of action before the Constitutional Court (art. 134), and because they are endowed with certain partial attributions relating to the constitutional order of the State itself (such as participation in the election of the President of the Republic, art. 83, in addition to legislative initiative, art. 121).

Regional normative sources are: 1) Statutes. Each region gives itself its own statute (deliberated by the regional council by absolute majority of its members), approved by law of the Republic; "special" statutes provided for certain regions (Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige and, in the future, Friuli-Venezia Giulia) are adopted by "constitutional" laws (they are therefore not manifestations of autonomy, but juridical acts proper to the State; statutes, that is, "given" to the regions, and not "posited" by them, as instead are the others mentioned first). 2) Regional laws. In relation to their own order and to the municipal districts comprised within them, and particularly on: local urban and rural police; fairs and markets; public charity and health and hospital assistance; artisan and professional instruction and school assistance; museums and libraries of local bodies; urban planning; tourism and the hotel industry; tramways and bus lines of regional interest; navigation and lake ports; mineral and thermal waters; quarries and peat bogs; hunting; fishing in inland waters; agriculture and forests; handicrafts and other matters indicated by constitutional laws. Broader is the autonomy of the regions with special statute. 3) Regional decree-laws and legislative decrees (which seem implicitly provided for by art. 134, but whose legitimacy is controversial). 4) Regional regulations in analogy to the general ones of the State; they may among other things concern the execution, in addition to regional laws, also of national ones, if these delegate it to the region with appropriate provisions.

The regions provided for by the constitution are 19: Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta, Lombardy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Umbria, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzi and Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia.

The regions have, with a demesne and patrimony of their own, also financial autonomy, determined by laws of the Republic, which "coordinate it with the finance of the State, of the provinces and of the communes." They cannot, however, institute import or export or transit duties among themselves; adopt measures that hinder in any way the free circulation of persons and things; limit the right of citizens to exercise their profession, employment or work in any part of the national territory.

The organs of the region are: 1) the Regional Council, elected according to the system fixed by law of the State and having a special criminal protection (cf. art. 283 of the Penal Code in the new wording fixed by law of 1947). 2) The Giunta elected by the Council from among its members; it is the executive organ of the region. 3) The president of the Giunta, also appointed by the Council, represents the region, promulgates regional laws and regulations, directs the administrative functions delegated by the State to the regions, conforming to the instructions of the central government.

In the region there are also constituted (by a law of the State yet to be issued) organs of administrative justice of first instance (with possible detached sections in localities other than the capital), in substitution for the present provincial administrative Giunte in their jurisdictional capacity.

The President of the Sicilian region participates in the Council of Ministers, in matters that concern the region, with deliberative vote (with merely consultative vote the Presidents of Sardinia, of Valle d'Aosta, of Trentino-Alto Adige).

The most extensive autonomy is the Sicilian one. The relative statute (which has presented from the outset and also subsequently, in some respects, delicate problems of constitutional legitimacy) was elaborated and approved by the local (provisional) Consulta, subsequently submitted to the examination of the National Consulta, issued by royal decree-law of 15 May 1946, no. 455, and has finally come to "form part of the constitutional laws of the Republic in accordance with and for the purposes of art. 116 of the Constitution" (constitutional law of 26 Feb. 1948, no. 2); it is valid for Sicily, with the Aeolian, Pelagian Islands, Ustica and Pantelleria. The organs of the Sicilian region are the Assembly (which corresponds to the "Council" of the others), the President and the Giunta, who are elected in the Assembly and who together form the government of the region. In addition to a broader legislative autonomy, Sicily has special jurisdictional and administrative organs (Council of administrative justice for the exercise of the consultative and jurisdictional functions proper to the sections of the Council of State; Audit Section and jurisdictional section of the Court of Accounts; High Constitutional Court).

The National Consulta had proposed to the government to extend the Sicilian Statute to Sardinia, but the Sardinian (provisional) Consulta, invited by the national government to formulate its own draft, discussed it and re-elaborated it in the competent constituent body and adopted it with constitutional law of 26 Feb. 1948, no. 3.

Valle d'Aosta had its own administrative order by a legislative decree of 1945; from it and from subsequent integrations the Statute adopted with constitutional law of 26 Feb. 1948, no. 4, draws inspiration with some developments. The territory of the Valley is placed outside the customs line and constitutes a free zone. The French language is placed on a par with Italian; official acts may be drawn up in one or the other, except for the measures of the judicial authority, which are drawn up in the Italian language. State administrations take into service in the Valley officials native to the place or who know the French language. The president of the Giunta provides for the maintenance of public order, by delegation or according to the provisions of the government of the Republic, to which he is responsible, by means of units of State police and local police. In the capital a coordination commission is constituted, composed of a representative of the Ministry of the Interior, who presides over it, a representative of the Ministry of Finance and another of the Valley, to exercise control of legitimacy over the administrative acts of local bodies and to promote the eventual re-examination of those acts. The administrative jurisdictional Giunta exercises the attributions within the competence of the analogous provincial giunte, in matters of administrative appeals and tax litigation.

The regulation of the autonomy of Trentino-Alto Adige received its formulation by taking into account the De Gasperi-Gruber political agreement (Paris, Sept. 1946), aimed at placing the relations of the Italian and German peoples on a basis of mutual satisfaction, with Italy's sovereignty preserved. The president and vice-president of the Regional Council must be, respectively, an Italian and a German in the first two-year period and the reverse in the second; the composition of the Giunta must conform to the composition of the linguistic groups as they are represented in the Council. While the principle that the official language is Italian remains firm, the use of German in public life (in accordance also with art. 6 of the Constitution, which provides for the protection of linguistic minorities) is legally guaranteed; the region is in turn required to guarantee instruction in Ladin in the elementary schools of the localities where it is spoken.

Ferruccio Pergolesi