Federal Reform: The End of the Beginning or the Beginning of the End?

On 28 July 2011, Roberto Calderoli, minister of the simplification of laws and regulations and a leading figure of the Lega Nord (LN, Northern League), announced that “the implementation of the federalist reform can be considered, for its most relevant part, accomplished” and that “federalism becomes a completed and transparent system, as it had never been: a true federalism of which all citizens will feel the effects.”1 On 11 August, Roberto Formigoni, the regional president of Lombardy, a leading figure of the Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Liberty) and a strong advocate of fiscal federalism, declared: “Fiscal federalism has lost all its substance; it does not exist anymore.”