Le deroghe al divieto di indebitamento tra Fiscal Compact e articolo 81 della Costituzione

The essay aims at verifying which margins of manoeuvre remain for Italian constitutional bodies in defining macroeconomic policies, within the annual budgetary decision, after the Treaty on Stability Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (the so called "Fiscal Compact") and the Constitutional Law no. 1/2012 (revising, among others, Articles 81 and 97 of the Italian Constitution) introduced the balanced budget rule. It does so analysing the institutional practice, that is the cases in which the Italian Parliaments authorised, through a vote to be taken by the two Houses by an absolute majority of their members, deviations from the balanced budget rule due to "exceptional circumstances". In its first part, therefore, the main steps that brought to the approval and implementation of the Constitutional Law no. 1/2012 are recalled, as well as some interpretative issues raised by the formulation of the balanced budget rule, as a constitutional principle. In its second part, the six cases of parliamentary authorisations to new public debt due to "exceptional circumstances" are specifically analysed: five of them found their legal basis in the general clause provided by Article 6, parr. 3 and 5, Law no. 243/2012, while the most recent one invoked the specific clause embedded in the following par. 6, conceived for financial operations. In the third and final part, some conclusions are drawn on the adaptability of the new constitutional principles and the rationale and the effects originated, till now, by the requirement of a vote to be taken by an absolute majority of the two Houses.