News Analysis: With constitutional reform, Italy likely to comply better with EU rules

Italian constitutional reform just passed a crucial threshold this week, after the lower house approved it in its fourth reading on Monday.

A final, but swifter, round of voting in both chambers of parliament is still to be made in the coming months.

Nonetheless, the bill has indeed moved a long step closer to its final approval, and to a referendum due in autumn 2016 that would leave the final word on the reform to the citizens.

The constitutional overhaul would deeply change the country's profile, mainly by demoting the upper house into a non-elected assembly in charge of regional affairs.

The new senate would be stripped of its current power to block national legislation, and bring down cabinets through no-confidence motions. It would be cut in size to 100 seats from the current 315.

As such, the reform aims at streamlining Italy's law-making process, preventing draft laws to shuttle between the two houses of parliament until these agree to pass an identical text of the bills.

This would possibly make Italy more efficient in updating its legislation, and in complying with the regulations of the European Union (EU), according to analysts.

"The reform is likely to help Italy modernize its institutions," Federico Niglia, professor of international relations and history with LUISS University in Rome, told Xinhua.

"It would accomplish the goal mainly by removing the 'double passages' (in state legislature) the country needed to have in order to build a solid democracy after World War II," said Niglia.

That system was anchored to the so-called "perfect bicameralism", which gave both houses an equal law-making status and the same veto power on legislation.

Such mechanism was deemed necessary at the time to grant Italy strong democratic guarantees.

"Yet, after decades of democracy, Italy can now afford to move towards a more flexible system, in which the same issues do not need to be always addressed twice," Niglia explained.

"This might help our country to adapt more promptly to decisions made at European or global level, and comply better with EU rules, thus avoiding infringement proceedings by the EU Commission," said the expert.

However, future senators would be selected among members of regional assemblies and mayors, according to the preferences expressed by citizens in local ballots.

The analyst pointed out this selection system appeared to many observers as quite complicated, and might represent a flaw in the framework of the new constitution.

Among other major changes, the reform would also return some key sectors previously devolved to local and regional authorities, such as energy, major infrastructures, and major transport routes, to the central government.

"This would be beneficial to the extent that the reform acknowledges some topics are becoming strategic for the whole country more than ever before," Niglia said.

"Sectors like energy or infrastructures do need development strategies strongly coordinated at national level," he stressed.

Both the demotion of the upper house and the centralization of strategic sectors would bring Italy's system closer to a model of state already in force in other parts of Europe, according to the analyst.

"From this perspective, the constitutional reform aims at replicating a model similar to that of Germany, which has one legislative body (Bundestag) in charge of national issues, and a second house (Bundesrat) representing the regions, or Lander," he explained.

Such model has long been working well there. Yet, it does not necessarily mean it would work well for Italy too.

"The reform alone is not enough to make such system perform well," Niglia warned.

Two more factors would be needed: a good leadership at local level, and, most of all, an effective control system on local authorities' spending and ability to achieve set targets, which is something Italy is "not yet fully able to do". Endit