After a controversial political debate that developed throughout the 1990s, the push towards a more markedly federalist structure of the state has resulted from the end of the decade into various legislative initiatives. At first, between 1977 and 2000, a series of provisions promoted the decentralization of multiple functions and tasks from the State to the Regions and local authorities, within the framework of a vast revision of the structures of the public machine. In March 2001, Parliament then approved a constitutional reform law that redefined the articulation of state powers in a federalist sense. In particular, the original system of art. 117 of the Charter, attributing exclusive legislative competence to the central power only on some matters expressly mentioned (among others, foreign policy, defense, justice, public order, money, immigration, relations with religious denominations, citizenship, general education standards and the determination of minimum levels of services); for all the rest the regional bodies became competent.

The reform, confirmed by a referendum in the following October, however, remained unclear and incomplete in some aspects, generating in a few years numerous conflicts of jurisdiction raised in the Constitutional Court now by the Regions now by the State. In the following legislature, under the pressure above all of the Northern League, a member of the government structure, the majority necessary to deliberate further changes to the second part of the Constitution matured in Parliament. In addition to modifying the powers of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister and the composition of the Supreme Court, a new constitutional law thus provided for the launch of a federal Senate and the conferral of further powers on the Regions (in particular in the field of health care, school organization and regional and local police); a particular autonomy was also sanctioned for Rome as the capital within the Lazio Region. The reform, approved at second reading in November 2005, however, broke down in the face of the negative outcome of the popular referendum held in the following June.

If, albeit through various contradictions, the leading role of regional institutions appears as a whole decidedly consolidated at the beginning of the new millennium, on the contrary the discussion on the subject of metropolitan areas seems to have died down, which nevertheless had aroused considerable expectations after the law of 1990 which had provided for the establishment. Only in Sicily, making use of the powers of the Special Statute, was their provisional coincidence with the provincial perimeters outlined, experiencing the activation of three ‘metropolitan provinces’ corresponding to the three major urban magnets of the island (Palermo, Catania and Messina). Still by virtue of a special statute, the Sardinian regional assembly has instead foreseen the start of the four new provinces of Carbonia-Iglesias, Medio Campidano, Ogliastra and Olbia-Tempio, whose capitals are still being defined. Finally, with the ordinary procedures of state laws, three new provinces were established in Lombardy (Monza and Brianza), in the Marche (Fermo) and in Puglia (Barletta-Andria-Trani).

The revisions of a basic municipal network that in some cases shows a pushed fragmentation, to the detriment of the functionality of many public services, do not seem to proceed in the direction of virtuous processes of amalgamation. The Regions, which are responsible for this, have rather moved towards the creation of a certain number of new municipalities. This thrust was, moreover, counterbalanced by the spread of a new cultural model of public action based on the local dimension of development: the coordination formulas between various basic autonomies have multiplied both for the management of services and for the design of lines development (consortia, targeted unions of municipalities, industrial and tourist districts, territorial pacts, etc.). Furthermore, within the big cities, a concrete

The territorial structure of the country impinges itself more and more strongly on the network of connecting infrastructures, which in recent times has shown to be strengthened especially in the central-northern section, thanks to a large amount of appropriations in the railway system and in that of the large viability. The pivot of the system is the bundle of connections that rotate on the ‘European corridor n. 5 ‘, which crosses the north of Italy from Turin to Trieste and hinges with other European axes oriented north-south at Novara and Verona, promoted to transit nodes of transnational importance. The start of the high-speed railway between Turin and Milan and then the works for the new ultra-modern Lyon-Turin section are located in this context. whose planned crossing of the Val di Susa has aroused strong resistance in the local communities. In the South, with the exception of the entry into operation of the high speed between Rome and Naples, the infrastructural equipment has made fewer steps forward: in particular, delays have accumulated in the modernization of the main road artery, represented by the motorway Salerno-Reggio Calabria. The Prodi government renounced the construction of the futuristic, and expensive, bridge over the Strait of Messina in 2006, although the contract had already been awarded, deeming it more urgent to improve the basic railway and motorway connections of Calabria and Sicily. high speed between Rome and Naples, the infrastructural equipment has made fewer steps forward: in particular, delays have accumulated in the modernization of the main road artery, represented by the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway. The Prodi government renounced the construction of the futuristic, and expensive, bridge over the Strait of Messina in 2006, although the contract had already been awarded, deeming it more urgent to improve the basic railway and motorway connections of Calabria and Sicily. high speed between Rome and Naples, the infrastructural equipment has made fewer steps forward: in particular, delays have accumulated in the modernization of the main road artery, represented by the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway. The Prodi government renounced the construction of the futuristic, and expensive, bridge over the Strait of Messina in 2006, although the contract had already been awarded, deeming it more urgent to improve the basic railway and motorway connections of Calabria and Sicily.

Despite the undoubted progress in the civil protection structure, the persisting shortcomings in the domain of risk prevention policies in a territory made even more fragile by the ongoing climate changes continue to produce frequent disruptions. Although mostly contained on a sub-regional scale, the consequences of heavy concentrated rainfall, which increasingly tend to characterize the rainfall regimes of the peninsula, appear particularly incisive and widespread, due to the increasing anthropization and the increase in waterproofed surfaces. Moreover, researches in the community attribute to Italy between 1980 and 2002, 38% of the victims in Europe caused by floods. The accentuation of climatic contrasts also includes prolonged drought seasons, which caused serious damage to crops in the Center-South in 2002 and in the North the following year. On the ever-open front of seismic phenomena, the millennium opened with the strong shocks that affected coastal Molise in October 2002, causing 27 victims in a poorly built school in San Giuliano di Puglia.