ABSTRACT
The Constitution of the Italian Republic, enacted on 27 December 1947, clearly departed from the unitary, strongly centralized model of territorial organization that had been in force since the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. Most of the relevant constitutional norms are to be found in Article 123 of the Constitution. The statuto is then published in the regional official bulletin. No approval of the central Government is required; however, the central Government may refer the issue of the constitutionality of the statuto to the Constitutional Court within 30 days of its publication. After Article 123 of the Constitution was amended in 1999, and another even more ambitious constitutional reform was enacted into law in 2001, a number of enthusiastic legislators and commentators saw the statuti as a kind of regional constitution, defining the identity of each region in a state that is becoming more and more complex and plural.
