Civil protection and subsidiarity

The regionalist demand conditioned and oriented political debate since the early nineties. In response to this question, the Government and Parliament agreed on a substantial transfer of competencies from the center to the peripheries, based on the principles of "subsidiarity" and "integration," to help citizens and their representatives solve problems. Consequently, some important state functions passed to the Regions and local authorities, and regional functions passed to local authorities.

In this context, civil protection was also redefined. Legislative Decree No. 112 of 1998 - implementing the Bassanini law - redesigned the civil protection structure, transferring important competencies to local authorities, including operational competencies, and introducing a deep reorganization of the State's residual competencies. The normative framework of reference was still Law n. 225 of 1992.

Civil protection was considered a matter of shared competence: regions and local authorities were responsible for all functions except for the "tasks of national relevance of the Civil Protection System."