“W the Regions?” – Report on the Regions

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The new Fondazione Etica Report evaluates and compares the economic-financial data and qualitative information on the Italian regions[1].

Published by Rubbettino, in collaboration with the Public Rating Agency and Luiss-GovLoc, it is introduced by the preface by the Director of Corriere della Sera, Luciano Fontana.

The analysis was conducted according to the “Rating

Public" (or qualitative rating of public administrations), built on the basis of the indicators required by current regulations - and, in particular, by the transparency decree of 2013 and the anti-corruption law of 2012 - and the methodology of the ESG sustainability indices.

Among the many interesting results that emerged from the Report, the striking one is above all the confirmation of a clear distance, still today, between North and South. Unfortunately, this is not a cliché: the Northern Regions are clearly more transparent and performing than those of the South. All the northern regions, in fact, obtain a qualitative rating above the sufficiency, even if some, such as Piedmont and Liguria, do not go beyond the Rating class Satisfactory.

Conversely, the southern regions obtain a rating not only below the regional average, but insufficient. Three of them (Calabria, Basilicata and Puglia) fall dangerously into a critical area, distinguished by Rating in class Poor, while Molise is not only last, but even slips into the classroom fallible, with a score of 19 out of 100.

On this North-South divide - which we frankly hoped, if not resolved, at least attenuated - the statutory differentiation in force between the Italian Regions does not appear to be decisive.

Those with the best qualitative rating, in fact, were not the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano (scores 68 and 67 respectively), nor Valle D'Aosta, but two Regions with Ordinary Statute such as Lombardy and Tuscany. And among the Southern Regions, Sardinia and Sicily do not perform much better than other Southern Regions with an Ordinary Statute.

These are data on which to reflect before even sitting down at the table of the State-Regions confrontation to decide on the so-called differentiated regionalism.

Link to book – ISBN: 9788849858730

[1] Evaluation carried out in 2018 with data available for all Regions, mainly 2017 and 2016.