According to article 84 of the Constitution “the office of President of the Republic is incompatible with any other office”. Therefore, if the person elected at that moment holds another role, he must resign before taking up office at the Quirinale. It happened, for example, with Francesco Cossiga, president of the Senate; Giovanni Gronchi and Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, presidents of the Chamber; Sergio Mattarella, constitutional judge; Luigi Einaudi, Governor of the Bank of Italy, Vice President of the Council and Minister of the Budget; Antonio Segni and Giuseppe Saragat, foreign ministers; Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Minister of Economy. Never in history has it happened that a prime minister in office has been elected Head of State and if this happened, an unprecedented procedure would be opened, certainly more complex than that which, for example, leads to the resignation and more or less immediate replacement of a president of the Chamber, a minister or a constitutional judge.
The only existing regulatory reference from which we can start is Article 8 of Law 400/1988, which governs the activities of the Government and the organization of the Prime Minister. “In the event of the absence or temporary impediment of the Prime Minister, the substitute – as stated in the provision – is the responsibility of the vice president or, if more than one vice president are appointed, the senior vice president according to age. When the vice president of the Council has not been appointed of ministers, in the absence of any other provision by the Prime Minister, the substitute is the responsibility of the minister who is the most senior according to age “.
So far in republican history it has happened that vice-presidents of the Council or senior ministers have been called to preside over the Council of Ministers, but there are no cases of absence or impediment of a prime minister such as to require prolonged replacements.
Precisely because of the incompatibility provided for by article 84, in the event of election as President of the Republic, Prime Minister Mario Draghi should present his resignation in the hands of the Head of State still in office before taking the oath and taking office, however, without the normal procedure being followed, as occurs in the event of a government crisis, with acknowledgment and invitation to remain in office for the handling of current affairs and acceptance of resignation at the same time as the appointment of the new Prime Minister.
Therefore, according to the opinion of authoritative jurists, with the communication of the premier’s resignation to the Council of Ministers, the senior minister, Renato Brunetta, would assume the substitute, unless in the meantime a vice-president of the Council is appointed, who currently does not exist. , or Draghi arrange otherwise. Once the now former premier is installed in the Quirinale, the minister who has assumed the leadership of the government would present his resignation to the new President of the Republic.
At that point, however, another unprecedented practice would open which provides that the Prime Minister resigns out of courtesy to the new Head of State and that the latter rejects them. In this case, in fact, the resignation would be accepted and a formal government crisis would have to open up to get to the appointment of a new prime minister. A series of formal passages that could however be in some way marked and defined by an agreement between those same political forces that should agree on the election of Draghi at the Quirinale.
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