The House and Senate close for the summer break, which resumed on 9 September with the electoral reform

Parliament, after a tour de force final to dismiss the last measures on the agenda, he goes on holiday. The Senate already closed its doors yesterday, today it is Montecitorio’s turn.

Both houses of Parliament will resume normal activity in a month, Wednesday 9 September: both the House and the Senate have already been convened for that date. The commissions, as per tradition, will resume a few days earlier, but the highlight of the work will take place in mid-September, when the Palazzo Madama Assembly will be called to vote on the reform of the electoral law.

A sprint given by the government and the majority before the summer break: the amendments must be presented to the commission by 1 September, then the text will be examined by the Chamber from the 9th, with sessions also in the following days until the final vote set for the 15th. The objective of the executive and the centre-right is to hurry, not to go beyond the first months of autumn (the date of September 30 for the Chamber) and close the dossier with the third reading, trying to avoid new incidents, after the rejection of the amendment on preferences by secret vote.

On this topic the Sherpas of majority have reached a general agreement which will be translated into a unitary amendment of all the coalition forces (even if ‘adjustments’ of the changes are possible during construction). So much so that the use of confidence in the last step in Montecitorio cannot be ruled out, even if confidence does not completely protect the reform: in the Chamber, in fact, there is also the final vote on the measure and on that occasion a secret ballot can be requested, but with the consequences that a rejection of the entire reform could have on the government and the majority.

The Rai node and the supervision of the Media Freedom Act

The electoral law dossier aside, the two houses of Parliament will also have to deal with other issues in the autumn, starting with Rai governance reform and from the transposition of Media Freedom Act.

This is a categorical request made by the opposition, which will not proceed with the indication of new names for the Supervisory Authority until the European regulation is also activated by our country and until the centre-right changes the name for the presidency (FI currently remains stuck on Agnes), thus continuing the total stalemate in the public service supervisory body.

Decrees and bills arriving at the recovery

But when work resumes, as has become tradition, the decrees will be the masters: between the Chamber and the Senate there are the legislative decrees to be converted on the conduct of civil and criminal proceedings following the collapse of the building of the judicial offices in Bolzano, the new fuel decree and the former Ilva decree (which will most likely also include the latest extension on the cut in excise duties passed by the Council of Ministers on 4 August and which expires on the 25th), the Campi Flegrei decree.

And again, the decree on the obligation to compost certain types of packaging. As for the bills, the cinema reform remained to be approved (in the Chamber already when work resumed on 9 September), and the ‘Coltiva Italia’, approved by Montecitorio and passed to the Senate, where the delegation to the government regarding sustainable nuclear energy must also be approved. Then the delegation on health professions and the bill on combating computer crimes and illicit data processing.