2.2. The President of the Council.

The Government constitutes a body that is elected by different bodies and provided with own detailed bills attributions, like the President of I advise, the single Ministers and the Council of the Ministers. If holder of all the general functions of the Government is the Council of the Ministers and if the Ministers are not only bodies of the Council but they constitute the vertex of the ministerial structures which are put before, President of the Council is indicated by the Article 95.1 of the Constitution like the body that “runs general politics of the Government and it is for it responsible” and that “maintains the unity of political and administrative adress, promoting and coordinating the activity of the Ministers”.¹²

Even if it is pacific that a hierarchic report does not exist between President of Council and single Ministers, the President is a primus inter pares, not less there are some important juridical tools by means of which the President of the Council can concretely exert his political primacy over other members of the Government. The power is up to the President of demonstrating autonomously towards the outside general political addresses of the Government; the President of the Council “agrees with Ministers interested in the public declarations that they intend to return each whenever, exceeding the normal responsibility ministerial, be able to pawn general politics of the Government”. It is up to the President to approve and to authorize diffusion of the bulletin on the works of the Council of the Ministers, while the single Ministers might not even make their possible dissenting opinion. It is the competent body that assumes a series of binding definitions for the whole Government: for example, it exposes to the Chambers the program of I govern, it puts the question about trust, assumes the decisions own of the Government in legislative progresses, it countersigns the laws and the acts with law strength and maintains count with the President of the Republic, in relation to the acts to be promulgated or to emanate, establishes the constitutionality judgement and there it can intervene. ¹³

Thirdly, it has personally the power of fixation of the date of the meeting of the Council and of definition of the relative order of the day, even if on the base proposals of the Ministers, being able to submit to the decision of the body also different arguments or even not referable to ordinary attributions of Council.

Analogously, he chairs and manages the Council of Cabinet, in case it keeps of constituting it with the composition that consider more opportune; it can institute Ministers' special Committees with preliminary functions, comparatively to objects to be submitted to the Council of the Ministers; it must be informed at the right time about the activity of these Committees and about those interdepartmental; it chairs the permanent Conferences for the relations between the state and system of the territorial autonomies; and it holds the powers that him derive from the presidency interdepartmental Committees and the vice-presidency of the supreme Council of defendant .

In fourth place it has the power of turning to the Ministers not only in the political directives and administrative elections in accomplishment of the decisions of the Council of the Ministers, but also “it connected with those whose the own responsibility for direction of the general politics of I govern”, that of “hanging the acts adoption from the Ministers competing in order to political and administrative questions, subjecting them to the Council of the Ministers in the immediately following meeting”, those of deferring to the Council of the Ministers “the decision of questions on which contrasting evaluations have emerged between administrations to different headline competing”, as well as that of agreeing with. It supplies up to the declarations of general political size. At the same time it can promote verifications on the functioning of the public offices and “in cases of particular size it can require to the competent Minister reports and administrative verifications”; so also all the ministerial rules must be informed of him, before their adoption, and interdepartmental.¹⁴

The Law 801/1977 has entrusted to the President of the Council “the high direction, general political responsibility and the coordination of the informative politics and of certainty” give turning secret services, not only attributing the task to him to chair the interdepartmental Committee for the information and the certainty, but instituting to his direct dependences the executive Committee for the services of information and of certainty; in this sector he is the President of the Council that “gives to the directives and emanates each necessary disposition for the organization and the functioning of the activities”.¹⁵