Criminalising torture, tackling poverty, homophobia and cyberbullying, protecting the environment: everything that was supposed to happen in 2016 and has been put off until the new year.
It has been an intense year, the one now drawing to a close for Italy, not least from a political standpoint. A year that, setting aside the controversies, the poisonous referendum campaigns and the changes of government, saw parliament pass some important legislation: the law on civil unions, the one against caporalato and food waste, and the public procurement code against corruption. But many — too many — laws that were supposed to arrive by 2016 were left sitting there, waiting to be examined: topics that were "too divisive", as Senate President Pietro Grasso described them. Yet these are the welcome developments we're expecting from 2017, far more so than the electoral law everyone is talking about at the moment. Here they are.
Italy, despite having ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture, is among the few countries in the world without a specific criminal offence of torture — something that in 2015 earned the country a ruling against it by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over the Diaz school case at the G8 summit in Genoa. A law on torture was subsequently called for repeatedly in the wake of the Cucchi, Aldrovandi and Uva cases: a bill is currently before the Senate, providing for the offence of torture to be punishable by four to ten years' imprisonment and introducing the offence of incitement to commit torture. In July, however, the debate was halted pending amendments "to avoid any possible misunderstanding regarding the legitimate use of force by police," as the then Interior Minister Angelino Alfano put it.
In October 2015, the Chamber of Deputies approved the citizenship reform for foreign nationals residing in Italy: children born in Italy will be Italian by birth if at least one parent holds an EU long-term residence permit or permanent right of residence; otherwise, they will need to have attended one or more school cycles for at least five years. But in the year since then, the bill has not been re-examined by the Senate.
In the emotional wake of the case of Tiziana Cantone, who took her own life after a private video was shared online without her consent, the Chamber of Deputies had drawn up in September a bill to protect privacy on the web that would allow victims to request the removal of content circulated online and provide for up to six years' imprisonment for stalkers: in Italy, one case of cyberbullying per day is documented, but the bill is now waiting its turn in the Senate.
The legislative process for the law to combat homophobia has been long and is still unfinished. It provides for very tough penalties for those guilty of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation, and obliges those convicted to carry out voluntary service in LGBTI communities: it had been stalled since 2013, 2016 was the year it was first approved by the Chamber of Deputies, and the hope is that in 2017 the job will finally be completed.
In 2016, the Renzi government did not have time to exercise its parliamentary mandate for tackling poverty. The new year is expected to bring measures to combat poverty and social exclusion, broaden the protections offered by social policies, and even deliver on the promised introduction of an inclusion income — a national economic measure to combat poverty.
Parliament in 2016 did not finish addressing two issues that are fundamental to the environment: land consumption and national parks. On the first point, the proposed legislation pushes for renovation rather than new construction, with the aim of reaching zero land consumption by 2050, whereas at present land is being built on at the rate of seven square metres per second. As for national parks, there will be work to do in 2017, because the text approved in November does not satisfy environmentalists, who see very few protections in it.
This year Italy gave the full green light to hemp cultivation. Cannabis, however, is still off the table: the decriminalisation bill is ready (individuals would be able to grow up to five plants each and buy up to five grams of marijuana, and a state monopoly would be introduced), but it has been blocked because, as noted, it is too divisive within the majority coalition.
But there is more: among the objectives that were on the agenda for 2016 and have been deferred was the creation of a parliamentary inquiry commission on public procurement to better combat corruption, which costs Italy 60 billion euros a year; reorganising the Civil Protection system by creating more efficient coordination and division of responsibilities in emergencies such as the earthquakes; reforming the criminal justice process by speeding up proceedings and extending the statute of limitations; and finally, reforming the anti-Mafia code. The hope now is to be able to count all of these among the things that happened in 2017, when the time comes to take stock.
Read also: 2016 through the eyes of the planet. The year's news according to LifeGate
