Meloni’s environmental lessons for Schlein & co

The Constitutional Court has partially upheld Sardinia’s appeal against the government’s Consolidated Act on Renewable Energy. In particular, the Court has ruled that those parts of the legislation which granted Palazzo Chigi the power to override regional decisions regarding suitable areas – and which permitted unrestricted activity at UNESCO sites – are unlawful. Conversely, it rejected Alessandra Todde’s requests regarding the procedures for identifying suitable areas, those permitting the use of military land for the development of clean energy, those prohibiting regions from imposing general and abstract bans on the installation of green energy plants, those permitting their construction within ports, and those not attributing binding force to the landscape assessments issued by the superintendents.

Overall, the constitutional judges have upheld the framework designed by Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, albeit at the cost of severely limiting the ability to force the hand of regions engaging in ‘passive resistance’. But even more striking than the practical implications of the decision is its political significance: on the one hand, a (centre-right) government often accused (by the centre-left) of being indifferent to climate change – if not outright a climate denier – is doing everything it can to promote renewables and has been partially reprimanded by the Constitutional Court for having gone too far; on the other, a centre-left that never misses an opportunity to assert its environmental credentials is united (save for a few rare exceptions) in support of a (centre-left) regional government that seeks to shirk its obligations. If we move from the realm of rhetoric to that of practice, the positions are literally reversed. Perhaps Giorgia Meloni should come out into the open and assert her commitment to the climate: the opposition cannot continue to rail against the government from the podiums at rallies, only to then side with the no committees when it comes to concrete cases. There is a limit even to such brazenness.