The autonomy principle in italian regionalism. Annual report 2013 - Italy

Regionalism had been considered as an institutional, political imbalance cause since the Risorgimento age. The reasons had been the fear of a potential damage of the national unity and especially the strong diffidence by the political parties towards models than cannot be controlled by the State. In fact, it is to be recalled the intense debate on the model of State that the Constituent Assembly had to adopt (1946-1947), the long time necessary in order to achieve the regionalism system (1948-1970) and the long period of the «regionalism without a model» (1971-1998). Currently (1999-today), regionalism is still an undefined entity. It is still looking for a valuable model: that is quite evident because, after constitutional reforms in 1999 and 2001, the need of unity and the decisions of the constitutional Court have progressively justified an increased centralization of competences.