Up until the fifteenth legislature, it was the Italian government's prerogative to select which European Union acts to send to Parliament for examination. The flow varied widely - two documents in 1999, 115 in 2000, and just one in 2002 - until the European Commission changed its practice in 2006, under an initiative by then-President José Barroso, when it began directly sending acts and law bills to National Parliaments.
In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty brought in subsidiarity checks. Senate participation in the formation of European law has risen over a hundred-fold: from just two opinions issued during the XIII legislature to as many as 250 in the XVII legislature.
Today, between political dialogue and checks on subsidiarity, the flow between Brussels and Rome is non-stop. During the most recent legislature, the Senate has "processed" 924 acts - compared with 435 in the XVI legislature - of which the government flags a dozen or so each week as being of special importance or of national interest. How do Senators manage to provide a reasoned opinion within the forty-day deadline? How are its committees organized to cope with this increasingly pressing pace? We publish here the first statistical analysis of the procedures adopted at Palazzo Madama to the pot.