Nicola Renzi (RF) rejects the new mechanism introduced by Article 7 during the examination of the bill “Amendments to the Regulations of the Grand and General Council” (Consiglio Grande e Generale). At the center of his criticism is the so-called “guillotine clause” (tagliola), which, according to Repubblica Futura, will substantially reduce the opposition’s ability to influence legislation, starting with the budget law.
Renzi cites several examples of compromises reached in recent years, from halving summer camp fees and starting activities right after the end of the school year, to the system for flagging unpaid social security contributions. According to the councillor, these measures were initially rejected and only later accepted thanks to the political negotiation that was necessary to secure approval of the budget law.
With the new system, Renzi argues, this room for negotiation risks disappearing: once the majority reaches the prescribed threshold, it will be able to use its numbers to reject the opposition’s proposals without having to reach any compromise.
Below is the full statement by Nicola Renzi (RF):
Nicola Renzi (RF): This article essentially represents what remains of the enormous draft initially presented, and I want to stress that point. The councillor who spoke before me listed the results we managed to achieve during the budget debate, wresting approval for a number of amendments. Afterwards, we also had to watch press conferences in which certain majority parties took credit for those results. What struck me most was what happened with the summer camps: halving the fees and starting the camps right after the end of the school year were measures we had been proposing for years, and which had always been rejected. They were only accepted because an agreement had to be reached — otherwise the budget law probably would not have been approved on schedule. We then saw majority parties boasting about that measure. But before that, many other proposals had been rejected. We had gathered them into a genuine “family package”: at least ten other Repubblica Futura proposals, including paid leave for parents accompanying their minor children to medical appointments, had been rejected because they were discussed while there was still time to approve the budget law. Some were later revived in the so-called family law, approved during this session. Then you ask us why we didn’t vote for that law: simply because it contained some amendments — actually better drafted ones — that we had been proposing since at least the previous legislature, and which you had always rejected. On the issue of flagging unpaid contributions, we came close to the absurd. After proposing that measure at least three times, during the debate on the so-called development law, Secretary Gatti told us it was technically impossible to introduce a warning system for workers whose contributions had gone unpaid for at least three months. Then, magically, a year later, faced with the need to approve the budget law, you had to accept that very amendment. In that moment, we did politics. The opposition used the only tools available to it to put pressure on the majority, which, in return, secured approval of the entire budget bill. We reached a political compromise that essentially involved accepting two amendments for each political party. As of today, this will no longer be possible, because the guillotine clause will allow the majority to approve the budget law on its own and use its overwhelming numbers to reject every single opposition proposal. You consider this a step forward; we consider it a step backward for the country. We have given concrete examples: the two results achieved by Repubblica Futura would not have been possible under this new mechanism. We will see what happens in a few months’ time, during the examination of the next budget law.
