“With the approval of the Calderoli bill in the Senate, which took place last 23 January, the implementation process of the Northern League-led project of differentiated autonomy has reached a turning point. The Calderoli bill which has as its objective of giving the ordinary statute regions greater legislative autonomy in as many as twenty matters currently under concurrent legislative competence (i.e. the competence of the central State and the regions), receiving the yes of 110 favorable senators, undergoes in its process towards definitive approval a strong acceleration, which raises strong doubts and concerns from many quarters. The differentiated autonomy plan, as it was conceived, proposes a significant redistribution of powers and resources in different sectors, some of which are of strategic importance for the development of the territories The regions will therefore be able to negotiate with the State the attribution of new powers and prerogatives and in parallel with the competences they will also be able to retain the tax revenue, which would no longer be redistributed at a national level based on collective needs, but at a regional level”. He stated this, in a note, Franca Marriedhead of Transport of the regional secretariat of the Democratic Party, on differentiated autonomy and transport.
“What lies behind this project which was hailed as a great victory by the centre-right, in reality – according to Sposato – is the high risk that the existing inequity between the territories will increase and, in this way, a system which instead of decreasing them, would increase the inequalities between regions of the north and regions of the south. And the risk is inherent in the very formulation of the bill which subordinates the implementation of differentiated autonomy to the prior definition and crystallization of the so-called LEP, or essential levels of benefits provided for by the Constitution and concerning the civil and social rights that must be guaranteed to all citizens, equally throughout the territory. But LEPs cannot be insured overnight, because to insure them it is necessary to eliminate the gaps that currently exist in the services offered to citizens from north to south, and resources are needed to eliminate these disparities. But without resources and therefore without the certainty of a convergence of service levels, greater powers for local authorities risks translating into the looming danger of increasing social and territorial disparities, favoring the northern regions, which are richer and able to guarantee uniformity. of services, to the detriment of the southern regions, which are poorer and have patchy services guaranteed. The lack of a uniform framework that establishes a priori what the essential services must be risks leading to a weakening of cohesion and unity. With a depiction of the country that will see its inequalities widen, with regions that will be able to benefit from uniform and high quality services, and regions forced to suffer a drastic reduction in services even in those contexts where guaranteeing them to a minimum is already a fortune”.
According to Franca Sposato “the project of decentralization and devolution of decision-making power raises many doubts due to the consequences that could derive from it, if we do not first take care of leveling the performances and services. Starting from a situation of inequality it is inevitable that those who have more will continue to have more and those who have less will continue to have less. Decentralizing important matters such as large infrastructures, ports and the transport system, for example, demonstrates that the government’s intent is to undermine national unity, enhancing inequalities to the benefit of the richest territories already well endowed with infrastructures and networks of excellent services. Think of infrastructural planning and management of transport networks at a regional and no longer national level, with the connected passage of logistical infrastructures but also of resources and of personnel, means increasing the risk of fragmentation. It means risking favoring a fragmentation of transport between regions, it means creating a vulnerability in investments, many of which are based on national investment funds which will necessarily have to be redistributed. And the risk is that the southern regions, and Calabria in particular, continue to be robbed of essential infrastructures to guarantee the right to mobility of its citizens, such as the high-speed train which risks not even reaching Praia, which means completely exclude our region. This is what comes out of the final report of the public debate on the lot of the new Romagnano – Praia high speed train which, when asked when the lot up to Praia will come into operation, receives the response from the RFI technicians “to date we don’t know. There are no funds to get to Praia.” Insult would be added to the damage. From the deluded and disillusioned series. And so we continue to make fun of the Calabrians, and all the citizens of the south forced to suffer the consequences of a distribution of resources that unfortunately looks towards the north, and not the south. And then they talk about equalization of services. To achieve this equalization – concluded Franca Sposato – more is needed, and the Calabrians know it and experience it firsthand every day. The centre-right Calabrian parliamentarians should also know this who, in the name of party servility, have turned their backs on their land and voted in favor of a law that condemns the South to live in conditions of marginality which seems to us destined to remain eternal, to the detriment of future generations who will thus feel increasingly legitimate in abandoning their land.