The news was leaked yesterday. And today the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, signed the Milleproroghe decree approved in the Chamber, accompanied however by observations on the rules on bathing concessions included in the provision. The head of state, expressing reservations on the merits and method of the decree, decided to promulgate it anyway.
“I am aware – he wrote in the letter – of the delicacy, from a constitutional point of view, of the referral to the Chambers exercised in respect of a law converting a decree-law, a few days before its expiry: it would inevitably make the retroactive effects, in many cases irreversibly, all the numerous other provisions that the decree-law contains, causing uncertainty and disorientation in the public administrations and in the recipients of the regulations. I therefore decided to promulgate the conversion law in question”.
The beach concessions
The reservations of the Head of State on the Milleproroghe refer, however, to the need not to further postpone the tenders for the beach concessions. On state concessions, writes the President, “it is clear that the profiles of incompatibility with European law and with judicial decisions increase the uncertainty of the regulatory framework and make further government and Parliament initiatives indispensable in the short term”. It is therefore necessary that the rules on bathing establishments be corrected, which in any case would lend themselves to disputes and probable challenges with the European Union, the Council of State, local authorities and more.
The technicians of the Quirinale would in fact have recognized in the provision two critical points: in the first place, the postponement would clash with the European indication – the Bolkenstein directive – of putting state-owned spaces into tenders, under penalty of the risk of an infringement procedure; and with a sentence of the Council of State of November 2021 which set the expiry of the extensions of the existing concessions at 31 December 2023. The one-year deferral – strongly desired by Forza Italia and Lega with an amendment approved in the Senate close to the vote in Lazio – would clash with these indications.
Furthermore, Mattarella explains, there is in the Milleproroghe “an insufficient financial coverage over time which, in order to ensure full compliance with Article 81 of the Constitution, must be integrated with the first useful legislative provision”.
The abuse of decrees by the government
On the other hand, as regards the government’s abuse of decrees and uneven rules, the President of the Republic expects a trend reversal, as recently assured by the Prime Minister Melons. “I appreciated – he concludes in the letter – the initiative that the President of the Council of Ministers has recently taken, in dialogue with the presidents of the Chambers, underlining the abuse of the emergency decree and the circumstance that the decree laws have been have become by far the predominant instrument through which governments exercise legislative initiative”.
And he added: “As observed” by the Prime Minister, “a trend reversal could take place with the recovery of an adequate capacity for legislative planning on the part of the government and a corresponding aptitude of Parliament to allow approval in reasonable times for ordinary bills. With respect to this government initiative, I hope for full institutional collaboration and I invite all political forces to evaluate it with a sense of responsibility”.