The draft bill on Rome as the capital reaches the Senate, but there are fears of cross-party opposition

Rome. Superpowers for Rome, who knows. This is the mood surrounding the start of the bill’s journey through the Senate regarding the powers of Rome as the capital, where it has landed in the Constitutional Affairs Committee and where the memory of the past bipartisan dialogue between Rome’s Democratic Party mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on the subject came to an end, before the summer, due to the Democratic Party’s abstention in the Chamber of Deputies. It is no coincidence that PD MP Claudio Mancini, a pillar of the Roman PD, let his bitterness show a couple of weeks ago whilst speaking to this newspaper: “That discussion,” he said, “was partly affected by a climate of confrontation fuelled by the right, but also – it must be acknowledged – by the bipartisan mistrust of parliamentarians from the north, with hostile manoeuvring cutting across party lines.” Over the winter, the Lega had attempted a surprise move by tabling an amendment calling for the change to be extended to other main municipalities within metropolitan cities, despite the Prime Minister having repeatedly emphasised – in agreement with Gualtieri – that “the Eternal City, capital of Christianity and the Mediterranean, the nation’s most populous and largest municipality”, with “the greatest concentration of historical and cultural heritage in the world”, a city that is home to the Vatican, constitutional bodies, numerous international organisations and diplomatic missions, “cannot continue to be governed, in practice, with the same powers as a municipality of just a few thousand inhabitants”. And now? Senator Andrea De Priamo, a member of Meloni’s party and chair of the Senate’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, is making a sort of appeal beyond the confines of the centre-right: “Given that we have entered the final year of the parliamentary term, we felt it was right to initiate the process in the Senate for the reform of the capital’s powers, as approved by the Chamber of Deputies”, he says, emphasising that “on that occasion, the PD’s abstention – despite having actively participated in the working group that drafted the reform, even setting out certain conditions which were accepted, albeit not endorsed, in an effort to secure broad consensus for the reform – risked jeopardising this important opportunity. At this stage, the Senate’s consideration is crucial: we hope the PD will reconsider, but if the incomprehensible abstention seen in the Chamber of Deputies is repeated here too, the responsibility for the failure to approve this measure – which could grant Rome powers commensurate with its role as the capital – will be clear”.