L'equilibrio di bilancio fra Costituzione e vincoli europei

di Gino Scaccia

SOMMARIO: 1. Prologo. - 2. La reazione delle istituzioni europee alla crisi dei debiti sovrani: centralizzazione del controllo sulle spese, anziché federalizzazione delle entrate. - 3. La disciplina costituzionale del pareggio di bilancio in Italia. - 4. I modi di accesso alla Corte costituzionale delle questioni concernenti la violazione dell’equilibrio di bilancio. - 5. Il parametro del controllo: la regola dell’equilibrio di bilancio. - 6. La clausola di eccezione alla regola dell’equilibrio: il verificarsi di eventi eccezionali. - 7. La violazione dell’equilibrio di bilancio come vizio sui generis “a formazione progressiva” e i problemi connessi alla declaratoria di illegittimità costituzionale dell’intera legge di bilancio. - 8. L’introduzione del vincolo del pareggio di bilancio: much ado about nothing?

The economic and financial crisis affecting the World, and Europe in particular, made it clear that European Union has been built since then as a Community of fundamental rights and equality; it has been quite unable, on the contrary, to apply the principle of solidarity between the Member States. Yet it is precisely that principle to make it possible for a set of so different Countries to become a political Union, not a merely economical one. The EMS can be considered the first attempt to place solidarity as a federalizing principle of the Union. To tackle financial crisis, European Union choose not to federalize incomes (providing, for example a Tobin tax, a Carbon tax or a continental VAT), but to centralize control on expenses, by introducing the Fiscal compact and renewing the Stability Pact. Due to these European rules, constitutional law n. 1/2012 introduced in the Italian Constitution the balanced budget rule, providing that State budget must achieve the «balance between incomes and expenses». The article analyzes content, exceptions and implementation of that rule and shows how tricky is its jurisdictional application by Constitutional Court. From one side, the lack of a direct access to the Court on behalf of private citizens makes it difficult for budget laws to be subjected to the review of constitutionality; from the other side, the lack of tools enabling the Court to declare an unconstitutional budget law is still valid until a new budget law is approved. As a result, a shadow of doubt could cast over the jurisdictional effectiveness of the balanced budget rule. Even though constitutional budgetary rules seems to be less enforceable than the other constitutional rules, to the point that they should be regarded as a kind of “soft law”, it is not fair to say that the balanced budget rule is no way useless. On the contrary, that rule enables Constitutional Court to struck down laws negatively affecting budget, thus forcing Parliament to preserve the liberty of political parties to make their own economical choices without being limited by the legacy of a huge Public Debt.