The Gasparri law which currently regulates the Italian media landscape is a bad law in very many ways. Not least of these is the fact that it sets out two different ways of appointing and removing members to the Board of Rai.
The first of these - the one currently in use - is hidden away in a subordinate clause. It gives the Treasury the authority to nominate two members of the board, viz, the President, and one Treasury representative.
The second method was due to come into force following Rai’s privatisation. Privatisation was improbable even under the centre-right, and has been ruled out by the new government.
Nevertheless, the chairman of the parliamentary commission which oversees Rai is now claiming that the second method of appointing and removing members is currently in force, despite the failure of the privatisation initiative. Why? Because it would give that same parliamentary commission influence over the removal of Angelo Maria Petroni, the Treasury’s somewhat embattled representative on the Board.
According to the law, after privatisation, any representative of the Economics and Finance Ministry is bound to exercise any vote at an AGM called to dismiss a board member “in conformity with the deliberation” of the relevant parliamentary commission. Unnamed jurists in one report argue that this provision can be applied despite the failure of privatisation because Rai was granted its broadcasting concession in the same clause, the clause must be operative, or else Rai is broadcasting illegally.
This is, perhaps, the wrong argument to make. The second method of appointing and removing members was not “inactive”, it was merely over-written by transitory provisions (comma 9, Art. 20 of the law). A better argument to make is that these transitory provisions failed to completely overhaul the original provisions. Specifically, they made no provision for dismissal of a board member. Whether it can be legitimately inferred from this that the legislative intent behind the law was to preserve the original provisions on dismissal, but replace the provisions on appointment, is unclear.
What is clear is that Landolfi has a case which can’t be instantly dismissed. The practical significance may be the same: with a centre-left majority, the commission would still move to dismiss Petroni if it voted along straight party-lines. But that would drag the whole sorry process out longer. If Landolfi’s goal is to embarass Treasury Minister Tomaso Padoa-Schioppa, he’s going about it the right way.
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