L’epifania del regionalismo differenziato (e dei LEP): primum uniformare deinde differenziare

This paper analyzes Italian Constitutional Court Judgment No. 192 of 2024, read in conjunction with subsequent Judgment No. 10 of 2025, which provides a definitive interpretation – more than twenty years after its introduction – of the scope and legal meaning of Article 116(3) of the Italian Constitution, as well as its relationship with Article 117(2)(m), identified by the Court as a necessary constitutional counterbalance to asymmetrical regional autonomy. The Court outlines the constitutional criteria and limitations governing the asymmetric devolution of specific legislative and administrative functions from the State to the Regions. It situates the mechanism of differentiated regionalism within the broader framework of the Italian form of State and the constitutional vision of regionalism, affirming that such devolution, grounded in the principle of subsidiarity, must respect the constitutional principles of solidarity, substantive equality, and national unity, and must be supported by adequate justification based on the criteria of administrative effectiveness and efficiency, equity in the enjoyment of civil and social rights, and democratic accountability, understood as institutional proximity.