Chapter 2.Structure of the Government in the Italian constitutional system

2.1. The Council of the Ministers.

The Council of the Ministers is a body, selected by all the Ministers (their participation in the meetings of the Council is obligatory) and chaired at the President's of I advise, it has regular fundamental government functions (legislative initiative, there included the predisposition of the budgets, the adoption of the legislative decrees, decrees it reads and government rules, the exercise of the control over the regional laws), and is indicated like the body that “determines the general politics of the Government and, with the purposes of the accomplishment of it, the general address of the administrative action”. The Council of Ministers “rules each question relative to the political address fixed by the fiduciary report with the Chambers.” The greatest part of numerous attributions of the Council of the Ministers can be divided into:

1. In theme of political address, the Council of the Ministers deliberates on declarations of political address and of programmatic engagement, it dawns them and it expresses the assent to the questions about trust puted by the President of I advise; it can give directives to the interdepartmental Committees at request of President of the Council;

2. In theme of normative activity, it decides the bills, adopts the decrees legislative and it reads the decrees, as well as the government rules;

3. In theme of international and community politics, it determines the lines of address and deliberation “the projects of the treaties and of the agreements international, in any case named, of political or military nature”;

4. In theme of agencies, companies, institutes and companies of national character, safe credit public bodies, it decides the appointment of the respective presidents, besides it confers the maximum managerial tasks;

5. In relation to the Regions, it can grasp the regional laws (art. 127.1 Const)., it exercises substitutive powers of which to the Article 120.2 of the Constitution, it decides it dissolution of the regional Councils or the removal of the Presidents of It junta (art. 126 Const).;

6. In relation to the religious confessions, it decides the concerned acts relations with the Catholic Church and with other religious confessions;

7. In relation to the relations with the auxiliary organs of the Government, it can deliberate that the Minister could not apply the opinion of the Council of State and it can the record asks after a decree to which the Court of Auditors has him denied;

8. In relation to the guardianship of the beginnings of constitutionality and of legality, deliberation of raising or of resisting attribution conflicts between the powers of the state or between the state and Regions; extraordinary cancellation of the acts proceeds all ”administrative illegitimate”.¹⁰

The Council of the Ministers decides, at proposal of the President of the Council, the appointment of one or more vice-presidents of the Council and of the extraordinary Commissaries of the Government, while it must be felt by proxy of functions to the Ministers without wallet, appointment of the Undersecretaries and the attribution of special tasks to a Minister.

The discipline of the functioning of the Council of the Ministers has been left for the longest time only to the praxis. Only the Article 4.3 of the the Law 400/1988, has planned one special rule. Such a rule has been at last a mediated adopted child mediating.¹¹