Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
41
The process of streamlining the use of water resources prioritised the protection of the
soil and the conservation of water and its sustainable use in environmental, economic and
financial terms. Such streamlining imposed, first, the reform of local public management,
which began with the 1990 Act, and, then, the gradual transformation of local public
companies into joint stock companies, thus preparing, the application of the free market
system at the local level (Marotta 2011). Following the reform of the Title 5 of the second
part of Italian Constitution in 2001, the national Parliament is responsible for the protection of
competition principles and has the power to decide how local public services should be
managed, while the provision of such services continues to be devolved to local authorities. In
particular, the responsibility for the management of water services continues to be devolved to
ATO Authorities. At the beginning of the 21
st
century, however, the process of liberalization,
deregulation and privatization came to involve local public services. Specifically, the
Legge
Finanziaria
for 2002
5
ruled that local authorities, municipalities, provinces and ATOs must
turn to the free market for all local public services. In the field of water management, this
marked the beginning of an attempt to entrust the optimization of service management
entirely to the market.
This gave rise at once to strong resistance across Italian society, involving people of
different political orientation and leading to the national co-ordination of all the movements
and committees against the privatization of water. In June 2005 these movements decided to
organize themselves permanently into the ‘Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua’
(literally, Italian Water Movements Forum; from now on, the Forum).
6
The Forum met for the
first time in Rome on 10 March 2006 and placed itself outside the traditional party systems.
Its purpose is the defence of public water as a common good and, since its constitution, the
Forum has remained strictly outside the traditional party system’s
modus operandi.
The aim of the various associations, committees and self-organized groups
participating in the Forum is to fight the privatization of water first locally and, then,
nationally and internationally in light of the principles of the Italian Constitution and of the
laws of the State. The Forum has achieved recognition as a fully constitutional body both in
terms of legality and in terms of procedures of democratic participation. The fight included
peaceful demonstrations in the offices of local management agents, but also legal challenges
in the competent Regional Administrative Courts and explicit requests for municipal,
provincial and ATO authorities to stop attempting to privatize water. At a national level, the
Forum’s first action was to prepare the text of a popular bill on water management.
Significantly, the popular bill was titled, ‘Principles for the protection, government and public
management of water and measures for the re-nationalization of water services’. Over a few
months over 400,000 citizens signed the proposal,
7
which was officially presented to
Parliament in 2007. The bill has not yet been discussed by Parliament.
5
This is the equivalent of the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget.
6
The Forum is made up by several organizations (see
.
7
50,000 signatures are required by art. 71 of the Italian Constitution for Popular Bills.
