The endless controversy concerning the referendum on hunting in Piedmont continues amid countless controversies, but "there is nothing unconstitutional about what happened".
The priorities for the members of the committee promoting the referendum against hunting in Piedmont change. That battle that began in 1987 in the name of wildlife protection has now turned into a struggle for civil rights. And if until a few days ago their slogans spoke of the need to reduce huntable species and impose new restrictions on lovers of shotguns, today they claim "the restoration of democracy and the constitutional right to participation", thefts of legality are denounced, liberticidal acts worthy of Pinochet's Chile, attacks on popular sovereignty.
Let's go over the facts. The referendum which was scheduled for next June 3 and which asked to repeal some articles of the regional law on hunting (70/96) has been canceled. In fact, with the seats almost ready, the turnaround of the Regional Council has arrived: going to vote costs too much (22 million euros according to his calculations, much less for the Committee had voted together with the administrative ones) and in times of crisis you have to save. Thus, on May 4, an article inserted in the regional financial law repealed the legislation subject to the referendum (by dropping the referendum itself) and introduced a new discipline that refers to the national one (157/92) to temporarily fill the legislative gap. The four innovations, collected in a single question, that environmentalists hoped to be able to introduce with the vote of June 3 (elimination of 25 huntable species, ban on hunting with snow, ban on hunting on Sundays, greater restrictions for wildlife companies) become thus an even more distant mirage.
"But be careful - warns Alfonso Celotto, professor of constitutional law at the Roma Tre University - there is nothing unconstitutional in what happened. The practice is provided for by the law on referendum 352/70: when the legislation subject to the referendum is modified in the direction indicated in the question already proposed, the competent bodies, i.e. the Constitutional Court in the national case, the Guarantee Commission in the specific case of Piedmont, they assess whether the referendum is still admissible. The Commission has expressed itself in favor of the cancellation and the council has consequently canceled the appointment for the vote. The controversies can make sense on a political level, not on a legal level ”.
The Committee, however, insists on trampled rights, and in fact in the national demonstration called for June 3 in Turin, the same date on which the referendum should have been held, he will ask for "the restoration of the constitutional right to participate". “It will be a demonstration for democracy” explains Roberto Piana of the promoting committee and vice-president of Lac (League for the abolition of hunting). "In the meantime, we have foreseen two legal avenues, recourse to the TAR and the request for dissolution of the Regional Council based on article 126 of the constitution for serious violations of the law".
The Neverending Story. It all began in 1987, the year in which the same referendum question we are talking about today was declared admissible for the first time. The law that 60 citizens had asked to reform was n. 60 of 1979. Since then the referendum has tried in vain to enter the electoral booths: it has passed through nine degrees of judgment, contradictory sentences, disputes over jurisdiction between administrative and ordinary courts.
Yes, because in this long period of time, different hunting laws have alternated, with the last one incorporating all the previous ones in a matryoshka system. Each time, therefore, it was up to the judges to determine whether the same questions envisaged for one rule were transferable to the next. So the referendum dragged from court to court until the decision of 29 December 2010 of the Turin Court of Appeal which had pronounced the fateful sentence: "the referendum must be done". The appointment, as we know, was for June 3.
But then it all started all over again and the hellish wheel of political decisions and legal appeals started up again: the law was repealed and replaced by a new one. The question of transferability returns: it is necessary to understand, once again, whether or not the new legislation modifies the principles of the previous discipline. In the first case, the referendum cannot be applied to the new law, in the second, yes.
Well, in about ten pages full of technicalities and hermeneutical reasonings not very different from those that Manzoni put in the mouth of Azzeccagarbugli, the members of the Guarantee Commission, with only one dissenting opinion, reached this conclusion: the question of the referendum could very well also work on the new law, because this effectively keeps intact the formulation of the previous one, but, and this is where animal rights activists feel that they are victims of a well-orchestrated mockery, this legislation cannot be submitted to a regional referendum because it is in effect a state law.
The reasons for the yes and those for the no - Turning to the questions concerning hunting, the picture appears more defined. Here there are no doubts of interpretation, the positions of who was for yes and who for no have always been very clear. On the one hand, the promoting committee spoke of the need for "a downsizing of hunting by protecting species at risk of extinction or of little hunting interest, giving citizens the opportunity to safely attend the woods, countryside, mountains, natural areas of our region on Sundays" . While the National Hunting and Nature Committee (CNCN) responded by claiming that “in the last seven years in Piedmont there have been a total of 21 accidents, or three a year, and we certainly cannot speak of an alarming figure. In terms of species conservation, the latest LIPU report shows that in Italy the most endangered species are birds that live in agricultural areas and not huntable species, which, on the other hand, boast increasing populations almost everywhere ”.
Points of view that are difficult to reconcile. Yet an attempt at dialogue could start precisely from the discontent caused by the new Piedmontese legislation. “The joke is that the national law that has taken over is now even more permissive than the one we wanted to reform. The huntable species are double those foreseen in the previous regional law ”says Piana of the Committee promoting the referendum.
The negative opinion on the law is also shared by Osvaldo Veneziano, president of Arcicaccia: "This law cannot hold for long because wildlife management is left to the regions. It is to be hoped that the new law that Piedmont will soon have to adopt will rigorously respect the European guidelines and the scientific criteria of ISPRA. Having weak and uncertain legislation is not good for anyone, not for hunters, not for animals. We hope that the common sense of Piedmontese politicians avoids adopting measures that end up haunted by hunters such as the unjustified increase in huntable species that comes with inevitable European sanctions, or the imaginative hunting calendars that attract appeals to the Tar by effectively blocking the activity of hunters ". As in fact it has already happened for the Marche, Abruzzo and Liguria. We keep our eyes on Piedmont.
Source: Galileonet