Italy referendums: Lombardy and Veneto 'back greater autonomy'

Umm; did they just contradict themselves? "We remain inside the Italian nation with more autonomy while Catalonia wants to become the 29th state of the European Union. We, no. Not for now." - So, they don't want to be seen like Catalonia, yet they say "Not for now" meaning they must be seen as such. I think the whole theory of giving certain regions extra autonomy while expecting that region to forever be part of the unified country has now been completely dumped.

> I think the whole theory of giving certain regions extra autonomy while expecting that region to forever be part of the unified country has now been completely dumped.

In Italy five regions have a far greater autonomy, for historical reasons. The proponents of the referendum would want something similar for Lombardy and Veneto, and in principle for all regions.

The nationalism started in XIX century by joining multitude of different regions into nation-states then homogenized by central administration, common educations system, military service and propagating 'natural' borders with 'natural' and 'eternal' history.

The idea of Europe as collection of semi-autonomic historical regions is complete opposite of nationalism.

Venetian here, let me state a few facts about this:

1) The referendum in Veneto was supported by the Venetian section of all major parties, across all the political spectrum.

2) In Italy five regions have a far greater degree of autonomy for historical reasons. Many Comuni (city councils) voted to leave Veneto to join nearby Trentino Alto-Adige just for this far greater autonomy. The proponents of the referendum would like to see more federalism in Italy, e.g. following the German model.

3) Italy is very divided from an economical point of view. Veneto and Lombardy may be easily compared to the richest German industrial districts, whereas the South's economy is not so different from Greece. Taxation in Italy is very high, and a lot of money gets redistributed from the rich North to the poorer South. To make a long story short each citizen from Veneto gives about 5000€ per year to each citizen in the South. Edit: see noisymemories's comment below, often the money is lost in a maze of entities and inefficiency.

I perfectly acknowledge a country should redistribute wealth, but many perceive that this redistribution is too high and unfair, and call for a less centralized Italy.

4) Italy is a young country, with 150 years of history, whereas Veneto has millenium-long story as the Serenissima Republic. The Venetian language is widespread alongside Italian, and many (again, across all political spectrum) have stronger ties to the Venetian heritage rather than to the Italian heritage.

> One of the regions' main complaints is that they send much more in taxes to Rome than they get back in public spending, and want to roughly halve their contribution.

This seems to be the common denominator a lot of the independence movements in Europe and, possibly, elsewhere. The desire to keep the profits in urbanized centers while still being able to sell their stuff, without tariffs, elsewhere.