Judiciary

Cassation, the Csm votes on Cassano's successor

Independents Fontana and Mirenda will abstain: arbitrary appointment method. Unanimity skips, possible tie in the ballot box between D'Ascola and Mogini

by Alessandro Galimberti

4 September 2025

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The Pnrr target resolution

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A few hours after the target="_self" href="https://24plus.ilsole24ore.com/art/se-csm-cambia-natura-e-perde-rappresentativita-AH7ewwvB"> Extraordinary Plenum of the Csm called to appoint the First President of the Supreme Court, which was held this afternoon, Thursday 4 September, the games for the succession of Margherita Cassano are officially reopened.

The abstention of the independent toga councillors Roberto Fontana and Andrea Mirenda, which was made official yesterday, was decided, according to the protagonists' statements, "aware of the delicacy of the choice within the framework of the self-constraints that regulate the matter". The fact remains that the 'minus two' on the ballot of the current Deputy President of the Court of Cassation, Pasquale D'Ascola, puts the other candidate, Secretary General Stefano Mogini, back in the game.

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According to last night's predictions, a pareggio could eventually emerge from the ballot box, far from the hoped-for 'unanimity' of the assembly, which will be presided over by Head of State Sergio Mattarella.

D'Ascola arrives at the plenum with a dowry of four of the six votes of the fifth committee, which is the one responsible for executive appointments.

With Cassano's current deputy - the first female president in the history of the Supreme Court whose term of office expires on 9 September - are lined up the left-wing togati, Maurizio Carbone of Area and Mimma Miele of Magistratura democratica, Michele Forziati of Unicost and the minority layman Ernesto Carbone.

Mogini, Secretary General of the Court of Cassation, received instead the support of the lay councillor in the League's quota, Claudia Eccher, and of the togato of Magistratura Indipendente Eligio Paolini, thus becoming an expression of the more conservative area.

In the evening Andrea Mirenda told Adnkronos that 'at the basis of our decision there is an insurmountable technical reason, linked to the concrete impossibility of giving serious and reconstructible reasons for the preference for one or the other of the two candidates, even though they are very different in terms of professional history and curriculum, in the light of a Consolidated Text that allows everything. One would, in fact, have to rely, in an arbitrary manner, on one or the other of that mass of jumbled and substantially overlapping evaluation parameters contained in the Consolidated Text desired by the Area and Independent Magistature consiliar groups, with the risk of perpetrating once again the well-known and heavy arbitrariness".

The resolution on Pnrr targets

Meanwhile, yesterday the Superior Council approvedthe resolutions to recover in extremis the targets of the Pnrr. Together with the 500 "applied" for remote hearings in the civil courts, the Csm has opened from today, Thursday 4 September, applications for temporary transfer (deadline 30 June 2026) for twenty Court of Appeal judges, distributed as follows: Cagliari 2 places, Campobasso 1 place, Catanzaro 3 places, Florence 3 places, Palermo 5 places Potenza 2 places Reggio Calabria 1 place Turin 2 places Taranto 1 place. To these, and out of counting, must be added the 150 first-appointment magistrates already assigned between Rome, Naples and Bologna.

Applications for transfer for the twenty vacancies can be entered from 4 to 9 September. Magistrates will have to participate in the reconversion course for change of functions, if applicable, unless they have already participated in the last five years. The change from prosecuting to judging functions, under penalty of ineligibility, requires the opinion of the Judicial Council.