De Luca case, the Consulta: Campania's law on the third term is unconstitutional

Ė Unconstitutional is the law of the Campania Region that allows the outgoing president of the regional government who has already served two consecutive terms to run for a third term. This was established by the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court was called upon to assess the Campania regional law of last November authorising a third term of office for Vincenzo De Luca. A game with repercussions that are not only local, given the League's pressure on its allies in favour of Luca Zaia's re-election and Schlein's dry no to the hypothesis of keeping a De Luca in the field who is now light years away from the Nazareno.

"Article 1 of Campania Regional Law no. 16 of 2024, after providing that a person who, at the end of his second term of office, has already served two consecutive terms uninterruptedly in that office is not immediately eligible for re-election to the office of President of the Regional Council, nevertheless established that, 'for the purposes of the application of this provision, the counting of terms of office shall start from the one in progress on the date of entry into force of this law'," reads a note from the Consulta press office. With this last clause, the Campania legislature has rendered inapplicable, for the next electoral round, the fundamental principle of the prohibition on third consecutive terms of office laid down by the state legislature with Law No. 165 of 2004, thus violating Article 122, first paragraph, of the Constitution, which assigns to the regional legislature the task of regulating, among other things, the hypotheses of ineligibility of the President of the Regional Council in compliance with the fundamental principles established by the law of the Republic. The prohibition of a third consecutive term of office operates, in fact, for all ordinary Regions, from the moment they have adopted any law on electoral matters, in the context of a statutory choice in favour of the direct election of the President of the Regional Council'.

"The prohibition of the third consecutive term of office operates for all ordinary Regions, from the moment they have adopted any law on electoral matters, in the context of a statutory choice in favour of the direct election of the President of the Regional Council". This was stated by the Consulta in a note announcing that it had ruled that the Campania Region's electoral law that would have allowed the re-election of governor Vincenzo De Luca was unconstitutional.

"There is clarity of the normative datum" so that it is clear that the state law on regional elections establishes "the prohibition or limit of the third term of office" and therefore if a regional president "has obtained two consecutive terms of office he cannot run for a third election". This is what State Attorney Ruggero Di Martino stressed in a passage of his speech before the Constitutional Court in the hearing on the Meloni government's appeal against Campania's law that, instead, allows a third term of office.

It was the Council of Ministers that requested the Court's judgment, challenging the Campania law that makes the two terms of office count from the current one.