The Consulta, 'the primacy of EU law', gender equality in the Polpen

Starting with Judgment 269/2017, the Court has left it to their discretion "to choose which path to take", with no order of priority between the referral to the EU Court or the question of constitutionality. "Both remedies," it clarified, "guarantee the primacy of EU law, one of the cornerstones of European integration, recognised since the earliest pronouncements of the Court of Justice and then by the jurisprudence of this Court (Judgment No. 170/1984 and No.67/2022). General principles consolidated over the years and recalled in an abstract way last Friday also by the (outgoing) President of the Constitutional Court, Augusto Barbera, in a debate in Florence, where the tension in the current relations between the judiciary and politics was very tangible. In attendance were, among others, the leaders of the judiciary and the SCCM, as well as the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, and the Undersecretary to the Prime Minister, Alfredo Mantovano.

On the relationship between domestic and European Union law, the grounds of the Constitutional Court's judgment 181/2024 make it clear that 'neither the powers of the constitutional courts can hinder or limit the power of the courts to make a reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling and not to apply the State law incompatible with European Union law when it has direct effect'.

Thus, even with the references to consolidated guidelines of Community law - whose primacy "strengthens and interpenetrates with the constitutional guarantees in a mutually enriching relationship", we read - the Constitutional Court drops another barrier in the effective equality of treatment between genders and paves the way for a more conspicuous presence of future female inspectors of the Prison Police. Given, among other things, the increasingly "coordinating and directive" tasks, training and education, with "an essential function of connection between the role of agents and assistants and superintendents, on the one hand, and the role of officials, on the other". (Career, the latter, in which the gender distinction has already been overcome). Tasks, therefore, very different from the tasks performed by staff in closer contact with the prison population, who must instead be of the same gender.

In recent years, in the still very male-dominated world of the prison administration, there has been an increase in the number of young women in top positions who have distinguished themselves through high professionalism. As well as for determination. The same determination that has led to this Constitutional Court ruling and this further step towards effective gender equality.