ABSTRACT
Of the 15 Member States of the European Union, only six have upper houses which can be classed as regional. This immediately raises a question: what do we regard as a regional chamber?
The Italian Senato, established under the 1948 constitution, was intended to be a further extension of the decentralised Italian state. By representing the regions, it would offer a collective countervailing power to the national government and the lower house. It would also tie the regional tier into the Italian state by being elected on a regional basis (Art 57(1), Italian Constitution).
