The Impact of “Regional Blindness” on the Italian Regional State

Abstract

To what extent do Italian courts adapt the national legal instruments (principles, rules and legal techniques) regarding state structure to the requirements of EU law? This paper aims to give an answer to this question by providing an overview of the most emblematic cases of “re-adaptations” operated by the Italian courts in order to ensure the respect of the structural principles of EU law. In doing so, I will distinguish two kinds of principles/rules (i.e. normative enunciations) and instruments/techniques (here understood as operative emanations of the normative enunciations) originally conceived for other goals and in a second moment used by the Italian Courts in order to comply with the EU law requirements. The first group is composed of those principles/rules and techniques expressly conceived for governing the relationship between Regions and State, provided with a more substantive (i.e. non-procedural) nature and reshaped over the years by the Italian Constitutional Court. The second group is composed of principles/rules and techniques characterizing the proceedings before the Italian Constitutional Court (which also serves as final arbiter in the conflicts between Regions and State) that are provided with a genuine procedural nature and that have been used, over the years, by the Italian Constitutional Court in order to guarantee first of all the supremacy of the constitution and, episodically, the primacy of EU law. These principles and techniques do not concern exclusively the relationship between State and Regions but they can, of course, be used in order to guarantee the respect of EU law even in cases involving regional legislation. Keeping this mind I have structured this contribution as follows: First, I will explain the reasons why research like this is “difficult”, while secondly I will move to the analysis of the two groups of legal instruments mentioned above. Some final remarks will be presented at the end of the paper.