VI. Part IV – Referendums

A. The key reform proposals

Chapter IV of the Bill enlarges the scope of the popular right to decide by referendums, facilitates its exercise, and reinforces its legal consequences. These are the key points:

•  The Bill also intervenes to alter the legal effects of some categories of referendums:






• As the law stands, confirmatory referendums can be requested only for statutory laws (Article 47.5 of the Special Statute), abrogative referendums can only concern ordinary laws subject to exceptions – e.g. fiscal laws as in Article 75 of the Constitution - and Statutory laws themselves (see Article 18.1-2 Referendum Law - RL), and a popular initiative can concern any issue having a provincial dimension but again with exceptions – e.g. taxes (see Article 1 and 2 RL). Only advisory referendums can be asked for any question having provincial relevance without limitations, possibly because of their weak legal effects and of the fact that their initiative is reserved to public authorities (see Article 17 RL).


• Under the Bill, it would become possible to request confirmatory and abrogative referendums for all provincial laws, regulations and administrative acts or parts thereof (subject only, for the latter category, to the limitations of Article 23.2, see below), while popular initiative and advisory referendum could be requested for any question which might be covered by such acts, with no exclusions whatsoever as to subject-matter (see Article 23 combined with Articles 34 and 40).






• The scope of these four types of referendums would however be greatly enlarged.


• The Bill does not in fact introduce any new kind of referendum. The advisory referendum, popular initiative and abrogative referendum are already foreseen in Article 47.2 of the Special Statute, and Article 47.5 directly makes provision for confirmatory referendums on statutory laws in the sense of Article 2 of the Special Statute (laws on the institutions subject to special adoption procedures). More details are available in the Referendum Law.






• The main effect of abrogative and confirmatory referendums – roughly corresponding to the abrogative referendums of the Italian Constitution and the optional referendums of the Swiss Constitution – would remain unchanged, but


•  Popular initiatives) would be profoundly altered, being transformed from something akin to the Swiss popular initiative “in general terms” (see Article 16 RL) to a form closely resembling a Swiss popular initiative on specific drafts (see Articles 40 and 41.5 of the Bill), and


• Advisory referendums, whose effects are currently left undefined in Article 17 RL contrary to paragraph III.8 of the Code of Good Practice on Referendums, would place the political authorities under an obligation to publicly declare how they intend to follow-up (Article 37); furthermore, every administrative activity in the area subject to the question put to the referendum would be suspended – save for urgent measures – as from the declaration of admissibility (Article 35.6 of the Bill, apparently derived from Article 7.6 RL which however concerns popular initiatives in their present form).






• The right to launch a referendum would be widened (voter initiative for advisory referendum) or facilitated (longer deadlines for popular initiative and abrogative referendum).


• Importantly, the turnout quorum currently applicable to popular initiative, advisory and abrogative referendums would be abolished (Article 47.5 of the Special Statute already provides that confirmatory referendums on statutory laws are not be subject to any quorum).