Occupations, the presence of the 'Struggle for Housing' movement does not justify the eviction stop

The presence of the "Struggle for Housing"movement and ofchildren is not acause of force majeure that renders legitimate the refusal of the forced execution of the judge's order of sgombero of the occupied property. The cause of force majeure, which is an obstacle to the execution of a jurisdictional measure, in fact, 'cannot be identified in the intrinsic difficulties of forced execution nor in the discretionary choice to postpone the interest in the execution of the jurisdictional measure to other interests, albeit legitimate, that the public administration is required to guarantee'. On the basis of this principle, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal by the Ministry of the Interior against its sentence to pay compensation, as the party responsible for the damage, approximately 200,000 euros for a four-year delay in vacating a privately-owned industrial building occupied by 30 people. The Supreme Court recalls that the European Court of Human Rights has, on several occasions, condemned Italy for its failure to vacate the property, affirming the right to compensation also for the moral damage suffered by the owners and referring to the national courts for compensation for material damage.

Pronouncements in which the Strasbourg Court found a violation of Article 6(1) of the ECHR on the right to a fair trial and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention on the Right to Protection of Property. The ECHR, while recognising the reasons of social order and public policy that could have justifieda delay in the execution of the evictions, considered unacceptable the long time to execute a warrant.

According to the Court of Cassation, 'in the current multilevel system, any interpretation of the internal system that left it up to the public administration to choose whether or not to execute the jurisdictional measures would, in itself, be in conflict with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and, in turn, with Article 6 of the EU Treaty, which has elevated the precepts of the European Convention on Human Rights to the status of fundamental principles of the Community system. Hence the obligation to compensate without the private individual 'being required to prove malice or negligence on the part of the personnel involved'.

That said, however, the Supreme Court reaffirms the duty of a democratic state to ensure the right to housing. A welfare, in line with Article 4 of the Charter, aimed at avoiding "that material or existential circumstances of an economic, employment, ethnic origin, health, etc. nature prevent or hinder the full development of every human person, as well as the possibility of his or her participation in social life, in conditions of substantial equality with other citizens and with a view to the progress, material or spiritual, of the society in which he or she lives".

It is up to the public administration to take action to provide an answer to the housing need that helps to remove de facto situations that can deprive the weakest subjects of a right that is the precondition "for the exercise and protection not only of the right to work, but also of other fundamental freedoms (such as the freedom to marry, to form a family, to procreate and educate offspring, etc.)".