Extended immunity for statements made by Members of Parliament
According to the Constitutional Court, protection is linked to the role performed, not to the location
Key points
Even statements made by a Member of Parliament outside the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate may be protected by parliamentary immunity. Provided, however, that they contribute to the public debate on matters of general interest and are expressed in a manner consistent with political criticism. These are the conclusions reached by the Constitutional Court in Judgment No. 165, filed on Friday 9 October, which establishes that it was not for the Chamber of Deputies to determine that the statements made by Vittorio Sgarbi, – at the time a Member of Parliament – and recorded on Facebook in May 2019, constituted opinions expressed in the course of his official duties.
The Italian Choice
The judgement points out that, unlike other constitutions (such as, for example, the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Constitution of the United States), the Italian Constitution does not adopt a spatial criterion to identify opinions that are beyond reproach, equating them with those expressed within the ‘parliamentary precinct’ and in the course of normal parliamentary activity, but instead adopts a functional criterion. This criterion aims to prevent immunity from being transformed from an exemption from liability linked to the office into a personal privilege.
The extension
Thus, over time, the Consulta has considered that the parliamentary function encompasses not only the provision and dissemination of information on the work carried out within Parliament, but also political criticism and denunciation aimed ‘to promote the quality of public debate and to channelling the diverse and divergent interests of the people into the political process characteristic of a pluralist democracy, so as to find, in the exercise of the representation of the Nation referred to in Article 67 of the Constitution, a compromise between them that serves the general interest’.
The limit
In this context, Sgarbi’s remarks constitute a response that is ‘unable to grasp the collective dimension of the interests at stake, remaining confined to the level of merely defending a personal interest’.
