The verticalisation of political decision-making and the relationship between state and regions in combating the spread of covid-19 infection

Abstract

The protection of health - an expression included in Article 117, paragraph 3, of the Constitution with Constitutional Law no. 3/2001 - has been regulated in our legal system through provisions that, over time, have flanked elements of legal uniformity with others of differentiation, both modulations that can be found in the original constitutional text and in subsequent constitutional and legislative reforms.
The territorial repercussions deriving from this system have fuelled a broad debate on the real capacity of health decentralisation to ensure the principles of solidarity and equality and the financial sustainability of the services - issues that weigh on the responsibility of the regional political institutions and that have been repeatedly intertwined with the proposals for a further devolution of competences to the Regions - but they have also offered the opportunity, in the midst of the pandemic emergency, to test the resilience of the models of health organisation and of the form of regional government, putting the relations between the State and the Regions to the test overall.