Covid-19

In order for the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Italy to be a success it is necessary to overcome the slowness and inefficiencies of the Italian Public Administration system. At the same time, the Recovery and Resilience Plan can play a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of Public Administration; something that is badly needed in Italy. To achieve this goal it is necessary, however, to first of all complete the process of full “dematerialisation” and of digital archiving of Public Administration documents, as well as to overcome the lack of interoperability of public digital services. What is needed is a solid “human resources strategy” in order to trigger a transformational change for Italian Public Administration.

The Council of state refused the appeal against the judgement of the T.A.R. Lazio, which denied a protective order for suspension of the mandatory use of so-called Green Pass, in order to exercise certain activities as introduced by the Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers of 17th June 2021. The decision stresses the importance of the vaccination as one of the UE measures for citizens’ health protection, as well as the evaluation of a real or a merely potential risk of security in processing of sensitive data, or in ensuring right to privacy and non-discrimination.

With the decision n. 261/2021 of the 10th September 2021, the Administrative court of Friuli Venezia Giulia has ruled on relevant aspects related to the compulsory vaccination for healthcare personnel established by art. 4 D.L. 44/2021. The court has clarified that it is incorrect to claim that the vaccines used in the current vaccine campaign are still on trial, since they have been authorized by the Commission with a conditional marketing authorization, after EMA recommendation.

The paper analyzes judgment T-238/2020 whereby the General Court rejected the appeal filed by Ryanair DAC. With the appeal, the low-cost airlines sought to obtain the annulment of the European Commission’s decision C (2020) 2366 final approving state aid granted by the Kingdom of Sweden to airlines with Swedish licenses. The General Court rejected the appeal as the concession procedures and the purpose of the measure were considered compatible with EU law.

The article aims to analyze in a linguistic perspective the administrative measures taken by the government to deal with the health emergency. More specifically, the contribution highlights the linguistic difficulties as well as the poor understanding of regulatory texts, or of their provisions, which result from a fragmentary and hasty legislative technique. Hence the difficulty for interpreters, and especially for those called upon to apply the same rules, to have a stable regulatory framework over time, and such as to allow a smooth and timely application and implementation.

When the European Union will come back after the summer break (la rentrée) in September 2021, the second half of the ninth legislature will begin, along with the second half of the term of office of the European Commission presided over by Ursula von der Leyen: the challenges are huge and the projects and unfinished business under way are numerous and complex and all the European institutions are being called upon to cope with a situation which is admittedly delicate yet full of stimuli and potential. First of all, the Conference on the Future of Europe must be brought to a successful conclusion: here not only is the Union’s credibility at stake but also the question of its ability to keep a steady hand on the tiller in the years ahead. At the same time, but still closely linked to the Conference, there is the question of defending the founding values of the Union, in particular the rule of law and non-discrimination, which are the subject of disputes with some States. Then there is the need to get the Next Generation EU operation - one of the most important political and economic initiatives in the continent’s history - off on the right track and, with it, get Europe out of the pandemic crisis, which has a variety of aspects in addition to the obvious one of health. The next few years will also be decisive for assessing the validity and solidity of the agreement on Brexit, which is as sensitive as the pressures on free movement brought about by emergencies. Lastly, there is the immense construction site of digitalisation with its various themes (artificial intelligence, Digital Service, teleworking, cybersecurity). It is therefore worth quickly taking stock of where we stand.

Self-certification is one of the main tools aimed at administrative simplification and, in particular, at de-bureaucratization of the relationship between the Public Administration and citizens, as it is aimed at reducing the burdens on citizens. Self-certification, which over the years has been the subject of many legislative changes, in Italy has recently been profoundly innovated by the measures adopted following the emergency situation caused by the Coronavirus, which have also extended the scope of application of the principle to relations between private individuals. Despite the many regulatory changes, however, the potential simplification that should result from self-certification is still severely limited in Italy. It will therefore be seen how self-certification – a tool created to relieve the bureaucratic burden on citizens – instead of representing the balance between guarantee, control and simplification, in some case produced new and heavy bureaucratic burdens to the detriment of private individuals, thus totally deviating from the purpose for which the institute itself should be intended.

Distrust in science and the spread of pseudoscientific theories appears to be one of the main factors threatening the freedom of science in modern Western democracies. This article discusses how due to the CoVid-19 pandemic this danger may even increase. In particular, the article highlights how certain behaviours of members of the scientific community may contribute to the spread of anti-scientific attitudes in society. The author analyses which strategies of action, especially within the scientific community, can be used to contrast such a tendency and points out that, regardless of the strategy chosen, the fight against pseudoscience requires a deep reflection on the problem of the “demarcation”, a key issue of the philosophy of science, which has been neglected in recent decades.

In its decision 2 BvR 547/21, the Second Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court rejected the application for interim measures aimed at preventing the entry into force of the Federal Act ratifying the "Own Resources Decision" adopted by the Heads of State and Government of the European Union in December 2020. At the same time, however, the Court declared the request for constitutionality review lodged with the application to be admissible and not manifestly unfounded. Although the hypothesis seems unlikely, in the future the ruling on the latter could lead the German Constitutional Judges to find a violation of the so-called constitutional identity (as derived from the interpretation of Art. 79, paragraph 3 of the German Basic Law), with serious consequences for the participation of the Federal Republic of Germany in the process of supranational integration.

The ongoing issuing of regulations in order to face the emergency stemming from the pandemic represents an interesting test to verify the integrity of our traditional system of protection of general interests. This system consists in the combination of general law, abstract and durable over time, on the one hand, and typical and punctual administrative provision, on the other. The orders of necessity and urgency are highly symbolic and emblematic, because they show a problematic relationship between law and power. The technique of using general principles (such as the principle of sincere cooperation, the principle of state supremacy, the principle of subsidiarity, the principle of reasonableness, the principle of proportionality, the precautionary principle and the principle of solidarity) must be refined in order to strike a balance between the rule and the exception. The excesses - of centralism, regionalism, authoritarianism and individualism - are always dangerous.