Il lavoro intende evidenziare lo sviamento metodologico dell’art. 138 Cost. realizzato dal percorso parlamentare e referendario della riforma costituzionale in corso, muovendo dalla natura giuridica del Patto del Nazareno (un fatto politico extraparlamentare e privo di effetti giuridici), la cui successiva (e presunta) «rottura» è stata ininfluente sul piano metodologico della mediazione parlamentare e del coinvolgimento delle minoranze. Di certo, la traduzione del Patto dalla sede politica a quella parlamentare ha trasformato il testo della riforma in un mito: un testo indiscutibile, formalizzato fuori dal tradizionale percorso di revisione e chiamato a essere accolto dalle Camere nella sua interezza e senza sostanziali modifiche.
Di qui, per l’appunto, il paradosso del Patto, rinvenibile nella sproporzione fra la forza politica impiegata e la debolezza costituzionale conseguita, le cui criticità sono state riconosciute persino dai relativi sostenitori; come pure, di rimando, la torsione «confermativa» del prossimo referendum costituzionale, destinato a legittimare prossime e necessarie modifiche costituzionali (una riforma semper reformanda) e a marcare nuove fratture politiche nel Paese.
The s.c. “Patto del Nazareno” is a political agreement (January 18, 2014) decided at the headquarters of the Democratic Party between its secretary, Matteo Renzi, and the president of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi. This kind of covenant between the two major Italian political parties provided the highlights of the next constitutional reform, then declined into the “Renzi-Boschi” constitutional bill. Even if the Patto del Nazareno was then broken, this latter bill resisted and has passed the first stage of the decision making process: the Prime Minister Renzi has now announced on behalf of the Parliamentary majority the will to submit the bill to the outcome of the “referendum confermativo”, foreseen by art. 138 It. Const.
The Patto del Nazareno, therefore, is a political fact of merely extra-parliamentary nature and devoid of legal effect, developed in a confidential, top-down and apodictic manner. Precisely for this reason it was able to exert on the Parliament an unprecedented binding force in the history of the Republic. In this way, though, the text of the reform has been transformed into a myth: a kind of indisputable and undisputed text, decided outside the traditional legislative process and called to be approved by the Chambers as it is, without substantial changes, not even in the articles that present certain indisputable problems.
This essay aims at analyzing the puzzling effects of the Patto del Nazareno on the constitutional reform and, more broadly, on the italian political framework.
Hence a constitutional reform subject to changes already budgeted, such as more flexible, however, the role of the Constitution guarantee, as remittances to political and institutional contingencies of the moment. Moreover, a reform intended to provoke new political fractures in the fabric of the country. The constitutional referendum, in fact, as proposed by the parliamentary majority to "confirmation" of their work, is such as to divert instrumentally its contents from the substance of the question to more general assessments on the political direction and the fate of the majority it, so nullifying any contribution of minorities.
