Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo

Sommario

1. La Corte di Strasburgo e l’insindacabilità parlamentare. – 2. La Freedom of Speech in Parliament. – 2.1. L’esercizio della giurisdizione ed il principio del non intervento nell’attività delle Houses. – 2.2. La Freedom of Speech e la “giurisdizione” sulle prerogative nella democrazia mediatica: il Defamation Act del 1996. – 3. Il caso francese: l’irresponsabilité. – 4. L’inviolabilidad spagnola. – 4.1. Sull’ambito materia- le della prerogativa: la nozione di opinione. – 4.2. Sui criteri che possono delimitare il confine del- l’inviolabilidad. – 5. Conclusioni con uno sguardo all’Italia.

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Italy seven times founding a viola- tion of art. 6.1. ECHR in cases regarding the application of art. 68, c. 1 Cost. (insindacabilità parlamentare). A measure that is necessary to guarantee a constitutional principle (the separa- tion of powers) seem incapable to fit the proportionality principle in relation to the protection of fundamental rights for the means used. The “insindacabilità” seems to present some “devia- tions” from the “common” constitutional discipline of analogous Parliamentary privileges of other European States. The paper tries to face this issue through an analysis of the English Freedom of Speech in Parliament; the French irresponsabilité; the Spanish inviolabilidad. The analysis shows that the issue of the conflicts between fundamental rights and parliamentary privilege is not only an “Italian problem”. On the other side, it is shown that it is the different context of “constitutional guarantees” to determine some peculiarities of the Italian “insin- dacabilità”. The way to overcome the problems arose from the ECHR case law is not simply to reach “uniformity” in the European regime of parliamentary privileges, but to take into con- sideration the different kinds of constitutional guarantees in scrutinizing the respect of the ECHR.