Rights and end of life, the calls of the Consulta that escape Parliament. President Sciarra: “A balance sheet on our credit lines to the legislator will soon”

Time for budgets, for the Constitutional Court. It’s time for disappointments. The Consulta presents its Yearbook 2022. And it cannot fail to be noted that the time that the constitutional judges had granted to Parliament to legislate on some very delicate matters – the end of life, for example – has passed in vain. Time is running out also for another very delicate topic such as prison for journalists, which is still pending in the case of defamation. For life imprisonment, the government acted with a decree and on which the Cassation expressed itself favorably. The feeling is that the Legislator does not give due consideration to these warnings of the Court. Or at least the majorities are unable to get out of it. «One day soon – is the criticism of the current president, Silvana Sciarra – we will have to make a very punctual assessment of this opening of credit to the Legislator which, unfortunately, on very sensitive and socially relevant issues, has not always led to satisfactory and rapid results for citizens”.

President Sciarra accompanied the publication of the Yearbook with an interview on the official website of the Constitutional Court. You defend the choice, which some jurists have instead criticized, of “deferred unconstitutionality”, ie that some provisions are clearly unconstitutional, but are not declared so instantly, and thus can survive the time necessary for Parliament to intervene. «That of loyal collaboration between institutions – she says – is a very delicate issue that finds its raison d’être in reciprocity and, precisely, in loyalty between the various institutional subjects. I believe that the Court, in the wake traced by the republican spirit of collaboration with the legislator, can also, in some peculiar circumstances, self-limit its power and choose to allow the time necessary for Parliament to prepare a new law”.

However, this time cannot be an infinite delay. In the case of the life imprisonment there was a suspension «always following the path of loyal collaboration between the institutions». And the suspension had even been extended “by indicating a new date for the hearing, to allow Parliament and the government the necessary time to intervene”. Until the Meloni government intervened with a reform in the autumn, which the Cassation deemed compliant with the indications of the Constitutional Court. And in any case, the Court did not stand by and watch. A very recent sentence has declared unconstitutional because it violates the right of defense the “visas of censorship” on the correspondence between a 41bis prisoner and his defender. “Here is an example of reconciliation between execution of the sentence and recognition of rights to the prisoner, in the wake of a judgment on the constitutionality of prison treatment, which cannot unduly restrict the sphere of guarantees reserved for the protection of the person”.

But there is another possible rift between this Constitutional Court and the right-centre majority that governs the country. What should be the relationship between us and the others in Europe? What osmosis can take place on the ground of the new rights, for example, which has just seen the European Parliament criticize the Italian rules on the registration in the registry office for the children of same-parent couples?

«I am convinced – reasons Sciarra aloud – that the strength of our democracies also draws support from the constant confrontation between the national constitutional courts and the European courts, in particular, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, confirming a transversal nature of rights which in intertwining strengthen and extend to address an ever wider audience of recipients».

The point is the cultural and political vision of every single country, every single government and parliamentary majority. How do they intersect with supranational and transversal bodies? «I am convinced that, in this framework of continuous collaboration, identity and sovereignty can always remain in the full control of the States but must also become, at the same time, the valves of new ultra-state gears. The basic theme, for the European Union and for the wider assembly of the member countries of the Council of Europe, is that of regulating the valve mechanisms, making them work in an ever more synchronous and integrated way. The fruitful exchange between the Constitutional Court and the supranational and international courts serves precisely to strengthen the links of this democratic fabric, within which to build mutual trust and common responsibilities”.