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In some European countries, royal families are looked on as symbolic heads of state, who may once have performed acts of historical relevance but now mostly feature in tabloid gossip.
In Italy, where the post-war Constitution forbids male heirs of the former House of Savoy from entering the country, the royals have become a charged political issue, landing as often on the front pages as on the social columns of the Italian press.
This week, the European Parliament is set to vote on a broad human rights resolution that would prod Italy to allow its would-be king, Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, and his son Emanuele Filiberto, to enter the country. The two also have a pending suit with the European Court of Justice, where they accused Italy last year of denying them their basic civil rights.
Forbidding male Savoys from entering Italy is "a cruel and unusual punishment out of place in modern Europe," Vittorio Emanuele has said in the past. After the Italian Parliament repeatedly denied his request to return, he brought the case to the European Court of Justice, citing the Amsterdam Treaty, which says that "no one can be expelled from a country following individual or collective measures by the state of which he is a citizen."
Now the European Parliament is set to discuss the issue as it formulates a broader resolution on human rights this Thursday. Unless the clause is struck from the resolution, the European Commission would be required to investigate whether Italy is in violation of human rights standards, and to take the country again to the European Court of Justice.
For Italy to welcome the Savoys back onto its soil, Parliament would have to change the Constitution. Yet many find the idea of being forced to do alter such a delicate matter of national history by dint of an order from Europe to be an unnecessary outrage.
Vittorio Emanuele -- who last saw Italy as a young boy before his family sailed out of Naples in 1946 -- his wife Marina Doria, and their son, Emanuele Filiberto, 27, a hedge fund manager, now reside mainly in Switzerland.
While some Italian politicians, especially conservatives, are in favor of the return of the Savoys, others demand that before they are allowed back, they be made to swear fealty to the Italian Republic.
Vittorio Emanuele has said he would refuse to perform the gesture, as no other Italian citizen is required to do so -- except for public officials, which he sys he would not be.
The monarchy was banished in a referendum in 1946, and the exile of its heirs became enshrined in Italy's 1948 Constitution.
In the volatile political atmosphere of postwar Italy, theSavoys were a divisive force. Left-wing partisans wanted nothing to do with them, and many who had fought alongside Axis troops in the Italian Army were appalled at the royal family's 1943 decision to flee the capital and seek protection from Allied Forces. No orders were given to Italian troops.
Tht theSavoy willingly left the helm of the country in its darkest hour has been the residual sentiment guiding past -- and present -- debate over whether the male heirs should be allowed to return.
"We are a people who liberated itself with a vote from a monarchy responsible for enormous damage and infamy. Whoever abandoned the people and fled like the Savoy did is not worthy of governing," Luciano Violante, the President of Parliament's lower house, said over the weekend.
"The people who now want to come back to the country are those who in the past said that the 1938 racial laws bore little weight," Mr. Violante said, referring to a recent statement by Vittorio Emanuele about the Fascist laws that forbade Jews from owning property and stripped them of their economic and civil liberties.
Even the right-wing National Alliance, which has waged its own struggle against its post-Fascist past, expressed hope that the Savoys might try to atone for the "absurdity" of that view before returning. They might "devote few works to ask for pardon for the incommensurable shame of the racial laws," said Enzo Palmesano, the author of the party's own condemnation of anti-Semitism.
The fact that European institutions may order Italy to allow the Savoys back poses a particularly thorny problem for President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, a tireless "Europhile" who strongly favors greaterEuropean integration.
Yet on the subject of the Savoys Mr. Ciampi may beg to differ. He spoke out against a 1997 bill that would have allowed the family to return, noting that his distaste for the royal family stemmed from "a painful and dramatic event" in his own life.
Mr. Ciampi was a 23-year-old officer on a brief home leave from the front in Albania in 1943, when the king fled and left Italy's armed forces without orders.
"I had a uniform with stars and found myself with so many others, abandoned and bewildered," Mr. Ciampi recalled. "These are feelings that stay with you for your whole life, experiences that mark you and tht you can't forget."
The Savoy's war record should not cloud "the great merits of the Savoy family during the unification of Italy," argued Giuseppe Morbilli, Vittorio Emanuele's lawyer.
Not everyone sees those merits. "In conquering the South, the Savoys sacked thousands of towns and massacred thousands of southerners, who were called bandits and killed only for defending their land," claimed Gennaro De Crescenzo, the head of the Naples-based Neo-Bourbon Movement, which exalts the Bourbon rulers most 19th century contemporaries described as the most backward of their time.
"With the Savoys, the South stopped having an economy and produced nothing but emigrants," he said.
If the Savoys must return, Mr. De Crescenzo said they should return to Turin, for centuries the seat of the dinasty. But Vittorio Emanuele has said he would prefer to sail back into Naples, the port he lefy as a nine-year-old boy banished from his homeland.
Bertel Haarder, a Danish Liberal Democrat, said he disagreed with including the Savoys' predicament in the broader resolution on human rights he will introduce in the European Parliament later this week.
Yet for Emanuele Filiberto -- who has titled himself as "prince" at official press conferences -- the matter has no political overtones but merely deal with the rights of a citizen. If Italy doesn't accept the European Parliament's resolution, he said, it would have to accept the court's verdict.
Meanwhile, Carla Voltolina, the widow of former President Sandro Pertini, refuted reports on Sunday that her husband had in 1982 offered the Savoys a tomb in Rome's Pantheon, where several other members of the Savoy family are buried. Fresh flowers are placed at their weighty bronze tombs and an honor guard stands watch. In the past, Savoy sympathizers have gathered there to collect signatures in favor of the family's return.
Ms. Voltolina recounted how her husband, who was president from 1978 to 1985, did look favorably on the return of the Savoys. He even kept up a correspondence with Umberto of Savoy -- Vittorio Emanuele's father -- she said, which ended abruptly when the former king neglected to note shifts in Italy's political landscape, namely her husband's new status, addressing a letter to Senator Pertini, rather than to the President of the Republic.

COMMENT
By James Walston *
SPECIAL TO ITALY DAILY

That fundamental text of English history, “1066 and All That,” declared that the Royalists in the English civil war were “wrong but wromantic” and that the Roundheads were “right but repulsive.” In Italy’s ongoing royal saga, the house of Savoy is certainly wrong, but sadly is not even “wromantic.”
The present would-be king’s grandfather, Vittorio Emanuele III, was an expert coin collector but as a ruler he was a disaster. Constitutional monarchs’ roles are very limited: they have no real powers until there is a serious crisis at which point they are expected to serve as the final bulwark of the nation and the constitution. On three occasions Vittorio Emanuele defended nothing but his own power and peace of mind.
When mussolini’s followers threatened Rome in a hectoring, bullying way in 1922, instead of calling in the army, Vittorio Emanuele made mussolini prime minister. (When the guardia civil took over the Parliament in another much younger and more fragile constitutional monarchy in Spain in 1981, King Juan Carlos had the leaders arrested, thereby saving the constitution and democracy.)
When mussolini passed a series of bills depriving the king’s Jewish subjects of their rights in 1938, Vittorio Emanuele privately complained that his Jewish doctor would no longer be able to treat him, but abjectly signed the bills into law. When Rome was occupied by the Germans in September 1943, instead of taking the “wromantic” option and staying in his capital, either fighting or passively resisting, the king who was also commander in chief of the armed forces, and his son the crown prince (a young and healthy army officer) used their privilege to commandeer some cars and flee to the allied occupied South. (King Christian of Denmark did not actually wear the yellow star when Denmark was occupied and Danish Jews threatened, but his resistance was such that the legend grew up; Czar Boris of Bulgaria allowed himself to be persuaded not to let the Germans deport his Jewish subjects.)
Even when the Allies and partisans gave him back his kingdom, Vittorio Emanuele clung to his throne, thereby preventing his son from re-establishing some appearance of dignity in the family.
The Italians then voted for a Republic and adopted a constitution which prohibits male Savoy heirs from coming into the country. Herein lies all the recent fuss about the Savoys claiming to be political exiles and even the European Parliament debating, and later rejecting, the matter.
Today’s pretenders are just rather a squalid lot. The father, called Vittorio Emanuele like his grandfather, is someone who killed a sleeping neighbor because someone else was making too much noise in an exclusive yacht harbor (he was acquitted of manslaughter but was certainly guilty of lack of self-control). Over the last few days, he has again shown his short temper as well as a blunt lack of intelligence by flinging peevish insults at the “petty republic.” His son is no better and threatens to challenge the government by making a public appearance at the August papal meeting for youth.
But after all, they are no worse than the South African arms dealer, the would-be king Leka of Albania or the other Balkan pretenders who thought they could get their old jobs back when the Cold War ended. That surely is the point. Most of the Balkan countries allow their ex-kings back like anyone else. After 54 years, is the Italian republic really as fragile as Albania... or Romania or Serbia? I hope not. The irascible Vittorio Emanuele has threatened to run for office and if he came back he would have little trouble finding a party which would put him on their list of candidates. He is unlikely to make a very edifying representative of the people but then he would not be the only hot-headed and crass politician in Italy or elsewhere. Those who want to keep the Savoy heirs out are also being excessive. Even if these anti-monarchists are not “repulsive,” like Cromwell, they are not right either. The European Court and Parliament have better things to do than discuss whether Mr. and Master Savoy can return to Italy. The article of the Constitution which prohibits their coming into the country was explicitly “transitional” (1); well, the transition has taken place. When they do allow the male Savoy heirs into Italy though, it would be the right moment to make it clear to them and their supporters that the last king, Vittorio Emanuele III can never be re-buried in the Pantheon. He was a disgrace to the country so it would be grossly inappropriate for the successor Republic to give him national honors.

*Mr. Walston is a professor of political science at the American University in Rome.
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(1) On the actual "transitory" nature of this article of the Constitution see also the letter below

Their exile inscribed in the Constitution and their plea for help rejected by the European Parliament, the royal Savoy family might have found a home in Italy, at least symbolically. The Sicilian town of Monreale, outside Palermo, has decided to confer honorary citizenship on the Savoys. The decision was taken by the town’s mayor, Salvino Caputo, a member of the right-wing National Alliance and the head of the parliamentary group that supports the Monarchy Federation. Since male heirs to the Savoy dynasty cannot set foot in Italy, the honorary citizenship will be claimed by Marina Doria, the wife of Vittorio Emanuele, the would-be king.

Professor James Walston is wrong, in his editorial published in Italy Daily on March 21, to describe as "transitory" the clause of the Italian Constitution which bans male descendants of the former royal house of Savoy from entering the country.
Such a reading of the clause wrongly suggests that it should annulled 50 years after the referendum that asked that it be instated.
The clause in question, Article 13, appears in the section on "Transitory and Final Dispositions." Some of the articles in that section are truly provisional, such as the one stating that leaders of the Fascist regime were to have their political rights curtailed for a period of five years.
Others. however, such as the law on the Savoys, were truly final, and are not included in the chapters of the Constitution which are subject to change.
An alteration of this law, as with those defining the form of government and civil rights, requires not merely new legislation, but the more complex parliamentary approval demanded for any other constitutional amendment.
Professor Walston's misunderstanding is common, but cannot be used as an argument to change the Constitution.
I personally agree with the idea that the Savoy rule be abolished, providing a formal statement is made by the family. They should accept their historical responsibility for the wrongdoings that Professor Walston correctly conosidered. They should also formally renounce any pretense of questioning the formal republican state of the Italian Republic.
That, I am pleased to note, is also the opinion of the President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has made clear.

Giorgio La Malfa
Secretary, The Republican Party

© Italy Daily/IHT 2000

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