Perché non è l’art. 64 Cost. a impedire il voto “a distanza” dei parlamentari. E perché ammettere tale voto richiede una “re-ingegnerizzazione” dei procedimenti parlamentari

Article 64, third paragraph, of the Italian Constitution establishes that “The decisions of each House and of Parliament are not valid if the majority of the members is not present, and if they are not passed by a majority of those present, unless the Constitution prescribes a special majority”. It has been argued that the presence, for the purposes of calculating both the legal number (structural quorum), and the majority to deliberate (functional quorum), needs to be physical presence, and that therefore it must be considered in contrast with this provision whatever measure that authorizes a virtual or "remote" presence. This contribution aims to bring some arguments in the opposite direction, that is to say that there is no lack of precedents or jurisprudential rulings to interpret that constitutional provision in ways compatible with experiencing, in certainly exceptional times such as the current ones, because of the Coronavirus pandemic, of forms of parliamentary remote activity. In the final part, the contribution hints at how, beyond the nonexistence of the constitutional impediment, remote parliamentary activity requires a profound rethinking and a redesign of parliamentary procedures, and inevitably ends up by to redefine Parliament's role.