The presidents of Italy’s wealthy northern regions of Veneto and Lombardy on Sunday claimed victory in autonomy referendums that seek to grab additional powers and tax revenue from Rome, riding a global tide of self-determination that has also swamped Catalonia in Spain.
The votes were nonbinding, but the leaders of the adjacent regions hope to leverage strong turnout in talks with Italy’s center-left government. As leading members of the anti-migrant, anti-EU Northern League party, they want to keep more tax revenue and have autonomy over such policy areas as immigration, security, education and the environment.
“This is the big bang of institutional reform,” Veneto President Luca Zaia said in Venice. “We are convinced, and I hope Rome understands, that this is not the wish of a political party. These are the wishes of the people.”
In Milan, Lombardy President Roberto Maroni said that with the votes, the two regions “can unify our forces, so we can do the battle of the century.”
The two leaders said they would meet with their regional councils to finalize their requests before going to Rome to meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.
Unlike in Catalonia, the referendums did not seek independence and were approved by the Constitutional Court of Italy.
Still, the autonomy drive is a powerful threat to Rome’s authority. Together, Veneto and Lombardy account for 30 percent of Italy’s GDP and nearly one-quarter of the nation’s electorate.
Maroni said that an overwhelming 95 percent of his region’s vote went to “yes,” with a turnout of more than 40 percent of Lombardy’s 8 million voters.
That far exceeded the bar for success, which he set at 34 percent, the turnout for a national referendum on constitutional reform in 2001.
Independence-minded Veneto easily met a turnout threshold to validate the vote set by Zaia, with about 60 percent of the region’s 4 million voters casting ballots. According to early returns, 98 percent voted “yes.”
The victory raises the Northern League’s profile ahead of national elections next year, but it also has the power to create a wedge between the rich north and the poor south just as Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, who supports autonomy, has pushed for a more national profile for the once-northern party.
The referendum campaign drove hard on the theme that too much northern tax revenue was going to the less-efficient southern regions.
The Northern League was founded with the goal of secession for the wealthier, more productive northern regions, but it gave that up when it joined the national government under then-Premier Silvio Berlusconi in the 1990s. During that period, it pushed for federalism, which lost steam during Italy’s long economic crisis.
Autonomy has become the new expression of the party’s identity politics. Also supporting the referendums were the populist Five-Star Party and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.
The referendum victory is just the first step in the regions’ quest for greater autonomy. Some of the policy issues they are seeking can be won with a new law, but many of the more emotional issues — including greater fiscal control, immigration and security— would require difficult-to-achieve constitutional changes.
The Italian constitution already grants varying levels of autonomy to five regions in recognition of their special status: the largely German-speaking Trentino-Alto Adige, French-speaking Aosta, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, for its position on the border with then-Yugoslavia, as a Cold War hedge.
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