Two judges of first instance and the Supreme Court raised three questions of constitutionality, asserting that the minimum limit to the penalty provided for under Article 73(1) of Presidential Decree 309/1990, in the wording resulting from judgment no. 32/2014 of the Constitutional Court, is unconstitutional. The paper concerns these three questions of constitutionality and addresses the controversial issue of the constitutional review of a criminal provision that introduces more favourable treatment for the convict as well as judicial review of the determination of the penalty. With reference to the latter issue, the author proposes a form of judicial review that is not based on the identification of the traditional requirement of a tertium comparationis, but rather inspired by the method established by the Constitutional Court in judgment no. 236/2016. The current system of penalties for drug-related crimes provides for a difference of four years between the maximum and minimum terms of imprisonment provided for under respectively Article 73(5) and Article 73(1) in relation to conducts that may be classified along a continuous spectrum; therefore the system of penalties appears to be unreasonable, unequal and disproportionate. The maximum limit of four years’ imprisonment set by article 73(5) is not a tertium comparationis but is the only legal base that guarantees a review by the Court involving an univocal inference in order to render Article 73(1) of Presidential Decree 309/1990 constitutional.
The use of State secrets in criminal law proceedings and the risk of terrorist attacks bring us to examine the interpretation of Law no. 124 of 2007 offered by the Constitutional Court with respect to the well- known Abu Omar affair. The solutions provided have not persuaded those who, like the ECHR, believe that the protection of «inviolable» human rights should Always be granted, especially in connection with serious forms of crime. Human rights guarantees must not be restricted when they are needed the most.
Starting from the debate on the doubling of the sanctions between criminal and regulatory proceedings, the paper analyses whether the typical guarantees of criminal jurisdiction granted in the finding of the fact must be granted in non-criminal proceedings aimed to the application of sanctions as well. This must be referred to the adversarial principle both as a method of participation in the gathering of evidence – able to ensure the highest standard of quality in the finding of the facts – and as a fundamental part of the defendant’s right of defence. The paper evaluates if the application of the principle in regulatory proceedings (such as the ones conducted by Bank of Italy or CONSOB, for instance) must be regarded as mandatory, in the light of the law provided both by internal norms of constitutional rank and by international obligations deriving from the European Convention of Human Rights. Indeed, if the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court itself recognizes that a sanction applied at the end of a non-criminal proceeding can have a substantial criminal nature, the method for the finding of the fact in non-criminal proceedings cannot be less guaranteed than in the criminal ones.
The principle of legality not only affects criminal law, but it also aims to ensure a fair trial through compliance with the rules of evidence. The circulation of the evidence obtained during an administrative inquiry limits the principles of orality and equality of arms. Nevertheless, under the Article 220 of the implementing rules to the Criminal Procedure Code, these elements cannot be used to form the basis of a decision if they are collected when there are already grounds for suspicion. Among its functions, the above-mentioned Article 220 guarantees at the level of national law some of the fundamental rights that are internationally recognized and constitutionally protected, especially by the Article 111 of the Italian Constitution, which provides that “the jurisdiction is implemented through a fair trial regulated by the law”.
The questions of constitutionality raised by the European Court’s in Taricco have to be evaluated under two points of view: as questions of domestic law (would a “Taricco law” be considered constitutional?), and as questions of limits that could be opposed to the reception of a European law principle. Under both points of view, the judgment raises important questions on the evaluation of the functional adequacy ot the power, conferred to the national judge by the European Court, to disapply in malam partem the rules concerning the interruption of the limitation period. The penal principle of legality and the principle of judge subjection to the law are what is at stake here.
The referral orders submitted to the Italian Constitutional Court, with the aim of avoiding the application of the judgment Taricco by the Court of Justice of the European Union, trigger challenging questions related to the fundamental principles of the Italian Constitutional order. This contribution is based on the assumption that not all those legal tools that are somehow connected with the fundamental principles of the constitutional order are to be considered as limits to the principle of primacy of EU law. On the contrary, only the essential core of these principles may resist against the principle of primacy of EU law. Following from this consideration, the contribution analyses the statute of limitations, exploring the possibility – on the one hand – to include this legal institution under the umbrella of the constitutional principle of nullum crimen sine poena sine lege, enshrined by Article 25 of the Italian Constitution, or – on the other hand – to consider the statute of limitations as a mere accidental manifestation of this principle and thus not in its essential core.
The principle of the primacy of EU law is fundamental to the European legal structure, but it isn’t easily established when confronted with the national criminal legal systems, ruled by the principle of legality and generally by constitutional principles concurring to form the member states’ national identity itself, something that the Union must respect. A prime example of these difficulties is the case of the obligations imposed by the Court of Justice in Melloni, which found the Spanish “Tribunal Constitucional” faced with the choice between accepting a limitation to its constitutional right to a fair trial in deference to the application of the European arrest warrant, or taking a position against the judges in Luxembourg. Or those imposed by the Court of Justice in Taricco, which is currently under review by the Italian “Corte Costituzionale”, and whose sustainability against the founding principles of the Italian constitutional identity is specifically examined in this article.
Il presente contributo è il frutto di un lavoro di confronto tra la disciplina italiana e quella tedesca in materia di accertamento processuale dei reati di guida in stato di ebbrezza ed alterazione da droghe. Il parallelo muove dall’esame della normativa straniera, alla quale l’autrice giustappone quella interna, ravvisando man mano analogie e differenze. La diversa visione prospettica offre numerosi spunti di riflessione su temi spesso trascurati dal giurista italiano, due dei quali toccano punti nevralgici del processo penale: l’estensione accordata alla tutela del diritto contro le autoincriminazioni rispetto alle prove non dichiarative, da un lato; le regole di esclusione e valutazione della prova c.d. scientifica, dall’altro.
Se si cerca di trarre un bilancio del periodo transitorio seguito all’entrata in vigore del Trattato di Lisbona, in campo processuale penale, emergono dati che si prestano a letture contrastanti. A prima vista, infatti, appare avvalorata la tesi di quanti osservino che poco o nulla sia cambiato, rispetto al periodo storico antecedente: a parte una maggiore valorizzazione dei temi legati ai diritti dell’imputato, l’impronta ideologica – tutta basata sul principio del mutuo riconoscimento – e la tecnica normativa – con previsioni prive di fattispecie, generiche e poco pregnanti sul piano tecnico – ripresenta gli stessi caratteri che già erano emersi nell’epoca pre Lisbona. Così come non pare variato l’atteggiamento del legislatore italiano, teso a recepire le nuove direttive in un’ottica di conservazione dell’esistente, vale a dire cambiando il meno possibile l’assetto delle previsioni codicistiche già vigenti. Tuttavia, se proviamo a soffermarci sul contesto nuovo in cui le direttive si inseriscono – vale a dire il quadro dei principi che devono accompagnare e guidare l’attuazione delle nuove fonti – lo scenario ci appare ribaltato. A un sistema multilivello, in cui il ruolo principale era attribuito alle disposizioni nazionali, se ne va sostituendo uno di carattere parafederale, caratterizzato dalla “libera circolazione” dei diritti fondamentali, in cui le previsioni degli ordinamenti statuali paiono destinate a rivestire una funzione del tutto secondaria. Le nuove direttive sui diritti dell’imputato, in questa chiave di lettura, vanno apprezzate più per quanto consentono di fare, al di là di ciò che in esse è espressamente previsto. In quest’ottica, la strada appare aperta alla diretta applicazione della CEDU quale diritto UE: è questo, a ben vedere, ciò che costituisce il vero obiettivo politico del Programma di Stoccolma. Si tratta di capire se il ceto dei giuristi, in Europa, sia pronto a recepire in maniera fruttuosa un cambiamento di tale portata, e di quali strumenti si debba dotare per essere in grado di affrontare la nuova sfida che la modernità impone.
La crescente attenzione alla necessità di apprestare una efficace risposta alle aggressioni all’interesse collettivo alla riscossione del “giusto tributo” si manifesta, nel recinto dello strumentario penale, con la costante espansione dell’area di applicazione di strumenti ablativi a carico del reo di evasione fiscale. Si tratta di una materia in vivacissima e benefica evoluzione, nella quale tuttavia, talvolta pare presentarsi il pericolo di perdere di vista il quadro di insieme. Lo scritto tenta, innanzitutto di ricomporre in un sistema unitario e coerente le ipotesi di confisca accessorie al processo penale, non mancando di rilevare le non poche aporìe e, forse, contraddizioni cui un approccio atomistico conduce. Sul piano pratico, vengono affrontati alcuni dei principali profili applicativi problematici, dalla interferenza dei procedimenti amministrativi e giurisdizionali tributari con il processo penale e le misure ablative, ai problemi correlati alla sussistenza di concorso di persone nel reato, alle conseguenze, per l’ente rappresentato, delle condotte degli amministratori, alla portata innovativa delle disposizioni del decreto attuativo della c.d. “delega fiscale”. Molte delle criticità concettuali e pratiche rilevate si risolvono in soluzioni almeno parzialmente innovative, che dovrebbero consentire di tenere insieme i tre valori della coerenza sistematica, della efficacia preventiva, e della conformità ai canoni di proporzionali e diritti fondamentali.