Voters in Italy's two wealthiest northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto are voting on Sunday in referendums for greater autonomy from Rome, in which a positive outcome could fan regional tensions in Europe at a time when neighboring Spain is cracking down to prevent Catalonia from breaking away.


Lombardy, which includes Milan, and Veneto, which houses the tourist powerhouse Venice, are home to around a quarter of Italy's population and account for 30% of Italy's economy, the Eurozone's third largest. Unlike Catalonia, the consultative votes are only the beginning of a process which could over time lead to powers being devolved from Rome. Also unlike Catalonia, which held an independence referendum on Oct. 1 despite it being ruled unconstitutional, the Italian referendums are within the law. Like Catalonia, however, Lombardy and Veneto complain they pay far more in taxes than they receive.

At its core, today's vote is about whether taxes collected in the two wealthy regions should be used far more for the benefit of the two regions, or diluted among Italy's other, poorer regions, especially in the south. Lombardy sends €54 billion more in taxes to Rome than it gets back in public spending. Veneto's net contribution is 15.5 billion. The two regions would like to roughly halve those contributions - a concession the cash-strapped state, labouring under a mountain of debt, can ill afford.


The two regions are both run by the once openly secessionist Lega Nord, or Northern League party, which hopes that the result will give it a mandate to negotiate better financial deals from Rome. The Northern League was established in the 1990s to campaign for an independent state of “Padania”, stretching across Italy’s north, from around Lombardy in the west to Venice in the east. It no longer campaigns for secession but argues that taxes the north sends to Rome are wasted by inefficient national bureaucracy.

While the twin referendums are non-binding, a resounding "yes" vote would give the presidents of the neighboring regions more leverage in negotiations to seek a greater share of tax revenue and to grab responsibility from Rome. The leaders want more powers in areas such as security, immigration, education and the environment.

Enthusiasm for today's vote will be critical as the level of turnout will have a direct significance of the results: in Veneto, it has to pass 50% for the result to be considered valid. There is no threshold in Lombardy but low voter participation would weaken the region's hand in any subsequent negotiations with the central government.

:zerohedge

Makes sense, I guess. Europe has only been lumped into nation states for a little over a hundred years. Now that the EU exists, it makes sense to question nations, particularly if you have your own language.

Western Europe was called the Holy Roman Empire far longer than it was called Germany, France and Italy. The old empire has now reintegrated into the common market.

There is no need for defence from other European nations anymore, so why be connected to a king and an army? The Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, etc, have shown how easy it is to split from their former nations and retain their prosperity.

Now that the UK's out of the EU, it may make sense for Scotland to succeed too. It could then stay in the common market - an advantage celebrated by most Europeans.

Why anyone would want to be shackled to dreary old England is beyond me. I'd ask Herbie, but he abandoned the place years ago.

After the regions of Veneto and Lombardy overwhelmingly backed more independence in a Sunday referendum, two more regions could request further powers.

Northern region Emilia-Romagna will demand further autonomy without holding a referendum, while southeastern Puglia is also viewed as a likely candidate for greater independence.

The President of Emilia-Romagna has already agreed to negotiate greater powers for the state with Italy’s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

It would not surprise me at all if, in the shorter term future, certain areas of Germany might seek greater autonomy than they enjoy under the Bundesrepublik.
Maybe even independence like the Catalans, because they've had it before and would be economically viable.
Two areas I think of straight away are Saxony and Bavaria.

We might be headed back to Congress of Vienna maps.

The best overview I've seen yet:

Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation


Europe Will Reap What Spain Has Sown

The Spanish government decided to reach back into its history and borrow from the playbook of longtime Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco in dealing with Catalonia’s decision to declare independence from the Spanish Kingdom as the Republic of Catalonia. The Catalan government’s decision to declare independence followed an October 1 referendum in the region that resulted in a “yes” for independence.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose Popular Party is a direct political descendant of Franco’s fascist Falangist Party, wasted no time in invoking, for the first time, Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which allows the Spanish Kingdom to impose direct rule on regions not adhering to the whiplashing from Madrid. Catalonia is the first, but possible not the last victim, of Spain’s neo-fascism on display for the entire world.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Catalans and Basques fought with bravery on behalf of the Spanish Second Republic against the fascist forces of Franco and his fascists. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini provided all-out support for Franco, much like the European Union, NATO, and the United States have fully backed Rajoy in his confrontation with Catalonia. Spain’s King Felipe VI October 3 speech, in which he condemned the Catalan referendum’s pro-independence results, was seen by many Catalans, as well as other groups like the Basques, Galicians, and Andalusians, as an unnecessary involvement in politics. Not only Catalans, but others across Spain, began calling for the scrapping of the Bourbon family’s monarchy and the establishment of the Spanish Third Republic. The Bourbons have little respect among the working peoples of Spain and France. After all, it was an ancestor of Felipe VI, Louis XVI of France, who lost his head to a French revolutionary guillotine after ignoring the poverty of the French people.

Spain’s reaction to Catalonia’s independence was swift and reminiscent of Hitler’s extinguishment of Austria’s independence in his infamous “Anschluss” (union) between Nazi Germany and Austria. Rajoy ordered the sacking of Catalan First Minister Carles Puigdemont; his entire Cabinet, chief of the Catalan Mossos d’Esquadra police Jose Luis Trapero, Catalan representatives in Madrid, Brussels, Strasbourg, London, Paris, Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Vatican City, Lisbon, Rabat, Warsaw, Vienna, Zagreb, and Geneva; and even Catalan schoolteachers. Catalan government ministers were replaced with lisp-talking Castillian apparatchiks sent to the Catalan capital of Barcelona to administer, by fiat, all Catalan government institutions. Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria took over Puigdemont’s job, while Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido took over the Catalan police functions from Trapero. Police duties in Catalonia were largely transferred from the Mossos d’Esquadra to the feared “Guardia Civil,” the notorious political enforcers for Franco’s fascist regime that were created by Franco as a Spanish version of Nazi Germany’s Gestapo.

The Madrid regime announced that new Catalan elections would be held on December 21 of this year, however, it is far from clear whether Catalonia’s pro-independence parties will be permitted to field candidates. Madrid may proscribe all of Catalonia’s pro-independence parties and groups, including “Junts Pel Sí” ("Together For Yes") and the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), leaving only pro-Spanish parties like Rajoy’s neo-fascist Popular Party and the accommodationist Socialists, Ciudadanos, and George Soros-financed Podemos on the ballot. Moreover, Madrid has threatened to put on trial all of Catalonia’s independence leaders for sedition. Sedition convictions under Spanish law carry a maximum 15-year prison term.

Madrid also ordered shut down a Catalan government special commission that was investigating Spanish police brutality against Catalan citizens during pro-independence demonstrations following the October 1 referendum. Ominously, the Madrid authorities ordered sacked police chief Trapero to turn in his passport, a sign that Madrid is contemplating seizing the passports of all of Catalonia’s independence leaders to prevent them from operating a Republic of Catalonia government-in-exile. The precedent for such action was the anti-Franco Spanish Second Republic’s government-in-exile established in Paris in 1939 after Franco’s seizure of Spain. After Nazi Germany’s invasion of France in 1940, the government-in-exile moved to Mexico City, where it was recognized by Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Venezuela, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Albania until its dissolution in 1977 after Spain’s so-called “constitutional monarchy” was restored after Franco’s death. The seizure of passports from Catalan officials and the closure of Catalan foreign missions abroad by Madrid is clearly aimed at preventing a Catalan government-in-exile from being formed.

Today, Rajoy and his junta have the support of all the major corporate periodicals in Spain, El País, El Mundo, ABC, El Razón, and Barcelona’s quisling newspaper La Vanguardia. However, no newspaper endorsements or messages of support from Donald Trump, Angela Merkel, Theresa May, and Jean-Claude Juncker that will enable Rajoy’s thugs to keep Catalonia under his boot heel.

I like the bit from Les Mis. Fairly brings a tear to the eye and takes the breath away.