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The train of decrees

2 years ago babelfish

(… sorry, I've neglected you for too long – almost a month! – but let's say there has been something to do. I'm back with a post that should help you understand why I don't have as much time to dedicate to you as I would like . ..)

As you may know, the European legislative process is so cumbersome and plethoric that in order to allow the experts themselves to follow all its articulations, Parliament has invented the " legislative train ": an infographic set up like the billboards of the railway stations through which we are allowed to enter (with the intention of getting lost) in the tangle of directives and regulations in progress. To date, on this beautiful family of herbs and regulations, only one certainty has been possible: that of those concerning the Finance Commission, Minister Franco will never come to speak to us in the Commission (Minister Tria did so reluctantly, the Minister Gualtieri did it willingly, Minister Franco did not do it at all: the Government is beautiful because it varies).

In memory of this best practice , I naturally call the document that our legislative office updates to keep us informed of how many and which decrees are being converted in Parliament, and what state of elaboration they are in the process of being converted into a "train of decrees". You have to start from there to plan parliamentary work, for the simple reason that, as I have explained to you several times, even if in theory you should know (but you don't know), art. 77 of the Constitution establishes that "the decrees [law] lose their effectiveness from the beginning if they are not converted within 60 days of their publication". In short: the method of legislating exclusively by decree is the crystallization of "be quick"! We must always act quickly, and therefore we should never read the papers, because we are always under the pressure to prevent a decree from decaying (with all the chaos resulting from the loss of effectiveness and the need to intervene to safeguard or not the legal relationships from it created).

Just to make it clear that these are not abstract hypotheses, the most recent example you remember is that of Legislative Decree 209 of 10 December 2021 "Urgent financial and fiscal measures" , whose conversion law is listed as Act Senate 2470. This decree it expired 10 days ago, but its legal effects have been subject to art. 1, c. 656, of Law 234/21, State budget for the financial year 2022 and multi-year budget for the three-year period 2022-2024 , which reads:

As we will see, other decrees in progress are destined to lapse, that is, they were issued not to last, but to produce only temporary effects: they are the so-called "to lose" decrees.

To give you an idea, five decrees are currently in conversion, two of which in the Senate:

  1. the decree-law of 21 January 2022, n. 2, containing "Urgent provisions to allow the exercise of the right to vote at the next election of the President of the Republic" , whose conversion law is listed as Senate Act 2501, incardinated at the 1st Commission (Constitutional Affairs);
  2. the decree-law of 27 January 2022, n. 4, containing "Urgent measures in the field of support to businesses and economic operators, work, health and local services, connected to the emergency from COVID-19, as well as to contain the effects of price increases in the electricity sector" , for the friends "Sostegni ter", whose conversion law is listed as Senate Act 2505, incardinated at the 5th Commission (Budget)

and three to the Chamber:

  1. the decree-law of 30 December 2021, n. 228, containing "Urgent provisions regarding legislative deadlines" , for the friends "Milleproroghe", whose conversion law is registered as Act Chamber 3431, assigned to the joint Commissions I Constitutional Affairs and V Budget and Treasury;
  2. the decree-law 7 January 2022, n. 1, containing "Urgent measures to deal with the COVID-19 emergency, in particular in the workplace, in schools and higher education institutes" , whose conversion law is listed as Act Chamber 3434, assigned to the XII Commission for Social Affairs ;
  3. thedecree-law 4 February 2022, n. 5, containing "Urgent measures regarding COVID-19 green certifications and for the safe performance of activities within the education, school and training system" , whose conversion law is listed as Act Chamber 3457, assigned to the XII Commission Social affairs;

but we are in a phase of low tide!

Two more will arrive in the Senate next week: the "Milleproroghe", which will arrive "armored" from the House (therefore without the possibility of amending it but with the need to incardinate it, give opinions, bring it to the Assembly, vote for confidence, etc. ), and a corrective decree of the unhappy (so to speak) art. 28 of Sostegni ter , the one that has thrown into panic thousands of operators in the construction sector; another will arrive at the Chamber, the "energy decree". Not a little stuff …

To return to the only topic that interests you, we have three "pandemic" decrees: numbers 1, 2 and 5 of 2021. Of these the DL 2/2021, which is in the Senate, is "to be lost": basically explained what had to do to vote who, like me, was positive at the time of the votes of the President of the Republic. Now the voting has ended and the decree can die.

The two decrees in the Chamber, DL 1/2022 and 7/2022, are more interesting. The first, in particular, is the one that carries a number of absurd and outdated rules, including the obligation to vaccinate all subjects who have reached the age of 50, the reinforced green pass for access to the place of work of over-fifties, the extension of the vaccination obligation to university staff, the use of the basic green pass to access personal services and public offices, postal, banking and financial services, commercial activities, and differentiation, depending on the cycle of education and the number of positive cases, the conditions in which distance learning is used. I can't tell you at this moment what will happen to the second, that is to the Legislative Decree 7/2022: will it flow into the first as an amendment by the Government? Gonna die? Will it be converted?

Therefore, the two "hottest" measures, for the issues dealt with and because they are still in the Commission (and therefore potentially amendable) are undoubtedly the Sostegni ter in the Senate (because the DL 2/2022 is to be lost), and the "Green work / school pass ", that is the DL 1/2022, to the Chamber (because the DL 228/2021, that is the milleproroghe, was fired by the Commission).

Regarding the "work / school green pass" (ie vaccination obligation for over-50s), the vote on the amendments should continue on Monday from 10 am.

Also on Monday, vice versa, the filing of the amendments to Sostegni ter expires with the Commission. The discussion of the amendments will therefore take place after they have been numbered and collated, probably as early as the week.

(… if you're bored reading, imagine me writing! But #aaaaabolidiga is also made of these things. For example, if you want to have your say, or at least try, on a decree, you need to know when and where it comes discussed, by when to deposit the amendments, etc. All rather boring things, but our job is also to follow them. I don't know how we will do when we are 200, but certainly, as the proponents of the reduction in the number of parliamentarians argued, the provision of reduction, as if by magic, will improve the quality of the elected survivors and the legislative production of the Government. Do you believe it? … )

This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2022/02/il-trenino-dei-decreti.html on Sun, 20 Feb 2022 14:19:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.