Concurrent Powers in Italy: the New State-centred Approach and Prospects for Reform

The Italian order provides from the beginning concurrent powers between State and Regions. For this reason it can be situated among those system, which are used to be defined as "marble cake" federalism. Nevertheless, at this stage, the Italian Parliament - on the basis of a poorly founded and little meditated criticism on shared competences, also in relation to constitutional litigation - is going to approve a constitutional reform aimed at reducing the area of concurrent powers. Even so, the setting that shines from the text being approved, in several respects, makes merely apparent changes, since the Italian constitutional legislator is taking decisions that would leave survive "in disguise" several concurrent powers, despite the formal elimination of their enumeration from the constitutional text.