Alcuni paradossi dell'abuso della decretazione d'urgenza e gli effetti negativi sull'esercizio della funzione legislativa

di Stefano Murgia

In the last 40 years, the use of law-decrees by the Government has progressively developed beyond the limits of the Constitution, thus generating three paradoxes in legislation procedures: 1) A poor enforcement of law-decrees before they are “converted into law”; 2) A high number of regulations provided by decree-laws; 3) Insufficient time for Parliament to consider other ordinary bills. Increasingly, the Government proposes the question of confidence in relation to the approval of the convertion bill. This can alter the law-making process as it gives an excessive responsibility to standing commettees.
Some law-decrees consist of a large number of provisions, sometimes examined by Parliament without enough accuracy. The Reform bill of the Second Part of Italian Constitution – which will be submitted to a popular referendum on 4th December 2016 – is aiming to rectify these issues, introducing new and stronger rules for law-decrees conversion procedure and a preferential law-making process (voto a data certa – i.e., to vote a bill on a certain date) for those bills, which are crucial to the implementation of the Government’s programme.