"When the President of the Republic promulgates a law, he does not make the law his own, he does not agree with it, he simply does his duty".
President Sergio Mattarella
underlines this while speaking to the Casagit leaders at the Quirinale
.
"Sometimes - he added - I have the impression that someone still thinks of the Albertine Statute in which the legislative function was entrusted jointly to the two Chambers and the king. When the Chambers approved the law, the king had to add his sanction, that is, its sharing on the merits, because it had also attributed the legislative power. Fortunately this is no longer the case. The President of the Republic is not a sovereign, fortunately, and therefore does not have this power".
"The President of the Republic is frequently invoked with different and different motivations. There are those who address him vehemently asking: "the President of the Republic does not sign this law because he cannot agree with it, because it is seriously wrong", or: "the President of the Republic he signed that law and therefore shared it, approved it, made it his own", underlined Mattarella. "The President of the Republic does not sign the laws, he signs the promulgation, which is a very different thing.
It is that indispensable act for the publication and entry into force of the laws, with which the President of the Republic certifies - adds Mattarella - that the Chambers have both approved a new law, in the same text, and that this text does not present aspects of evident unconstitutionality ".
"Freedom of the press is fundamental for our democracy, as for any democracy. Which sees in our Constitution a clear, clear, indisputable protection, for which there is an assumption of responsibility on the part of journalists: loyalty, independence of information, freedom of criticism, respect for the personality of others, respect for the facts. But it is an indispensable element of our democracy, and I have tried many times to recall and underline this character of indispensability."
Among the fundamental tasks of the President of the Republic "there is that of ensuring that everyone respects the Constitution. Starting from himself, naturally, and that everyone respects it in conversations and discussions between the constitutional bodies. It would be serious if one of these, and among these also the President of the Republic, claimed to attribute to himself tasks that the Constitution assigns to other powers of the State".
"It would be serious if one of these, including the President of the Republic, claimed to attribute tasks that the Constitution assigns to other powers of the State", underlined Mattarella.
"And this is an indication of democracy that fits into that harmonious plan that our Constitution indicates and presents in a sincerely admirable way for those who wrote it, who had the strength - in difficult and also very dialectically heated conditions - to define it and This too is part of freedom, respecting the freedom of all those to whom the Constitution assigns a task, which - he further specified - no one else can take away to do it their own.
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