RESEARCH PROJECT OF THE MILAN POLITECNICO UNIT - MODEL B Year 2005 - prot. 2005127580_004
Multilevel institutional agreements, with special reguard to trilateral conventions
Description of the research programme - Director: Prof. Maria Agostina Cabbiddu
a) The research unit first aim is to find out the principles supporting the network and the cooperation among the different political bodies. Of these principles it has to be mentioned the fair cooperation one, which implies the creation of a network based on agreements and conventions to the extent they are functional to dialogue and comparison among the different and not hierarchically ordered levels of government. Nevertheless, the fair cooperation principle is perfectly compatible with the provision of centralized decision making processes in case the agreement or the convention is not reached. In this frame has to be placed the recent administrative proceeding reform, that expressly takes into account the political and institutional pluralism and, therefore, introduces new forms of agreements among autonomous levels of government (l. 11 febbraio 2005, n. 15, art. 11). Another important principle is the principle of subsidiarity, which permits to find out the level of government competent at promoting agreements or to make decisions in case the agreement is not reached. In fact, the subsidiarity principle even concerns functions' exercise. In the perspective of institutional pluralism, the principle of differentiation is important too. A pluralistic system needs, in fact, to be flexible in order to underline the differences existing at each level of government. On the one hand, the differentiation guarantees autonomy and efficiency, on the other hand, when resulting from agreements and conventions, it doesn't compromise the system unity (see, Report COM (2002) 709). The statement can easily been proved only recalling the great use that pluralistic system makes of vertical agreements. In Italian Constitution are formally provided agreements between the State and the Regions in varied matters (art. 116) and between Region and Region (art. 117), finally, between Region and European Union (art. 117). b) The second research unit aim is to find out the different forms of agreements and conventions provided by the european, national and regional laws in order to underline the differences on proceeding and content. c) The third step consists in finding out the lacks of the present legal system with particular regard to the kind of agreements and the procedural principles regulating them and through which the system efficiency and efficacy can be safeguarded. In this perspective and taking into account that agreements and conventions could be used to differentiate powers, to locate legislative and administrative functions and even to exercise these functions (see, art. 116 of Italian Constitution; Report COM (2002) 709), procedural principles become more and more important. The exiting procedural principles provided for some kinds of agreements must be compared in order to find out negative and positive aspects. To this extent, the European Commission Report on trilateral conventions and agreements and the study of the recent agreement among UE, Italy and Lombardia, could be of a certain interest (Report COM (2002) 709). d) The coordination of the single unit results with other units' results is the last step of the research. It will permit to evaluate the potentialities of institutional agreements for the needs of economic governance.