Italy: Stands up to the EU

Who'd ha thunk it? Italian Constitutional Court tells ECHR to take a hike, asserts national sovereignty




By Gerald Warner
December 19th, 2009
The Telegraph


The first blow has been struck against the encroaching tyranny of the European Union and it is a significant one. In fact, one member state has defiantly drawn a line in the sand and signalled that it will not tolerate erosion of its sovereignty. Although it attracted little attention when it was published last month, now that commentators have had an opportunity to analyse Sentenza N. 311 by the Italian Constitutional Court, its monumental significance in rolling back the Lisbon Treaty is now being appreciated. (Hat tip, as they say, to Dr Piero Tozzi.)

The Constitutional Court ruled baldly that, where rulings by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) conflict with provisions of the Italian Constitution, such decrees “lack legitimacy”. In other words, they will not be enforced in Italy. Although this judgement related to issues concerning the civil service, the universal interpretation is that the ECHR’s aggressive ruling in Lautsi v Italy, seeking to ban crucifixes from Italian classrooms, shortly before, was what concentrated the minds of the judges in the Italian Supreme Court.

In fact, sources close to the Italian judiciary have informally briefed that the decision was a warning that activist rulings by the ECHR “will not be given deference”. The juridical principle at issue here is nothing less than national sovereignty. Where an alien court has the right to overrule a national constitution, sovereignty has de facto ceased to exist. Citizens may go to the polls at a general election to elect an administration, but the “government” they choose will be no more than a municipal council. This, of course, was always the intention of the Lisbon Treaty and its supporters.

Europhile politicians and commentators in Britain, after the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the ratting by the Vichy Tories on their promise of a referendum, were masochistically resigned to the United Kingdom becoming a province of Brussels. Now the Italians have overthrown the fatalistic notion of the irresistible march of Eurofederalism. They have simply said: if it encroaches upon our national sovereignty, it won’t fly here. This is excellent.

Can we rely on our own New Labour-designed Supreme Court to take an equally robust stance in defence of the British Constitution? Ay, there’s the rub. An incoming Tory government (if we had a Tory party) should be committed to abolishing this alien tribunal and restoring jurisdiction to the House of Lords.

But such considerations should not blind us to the fact that the sovereignty of European states has been given a crucial boost by the Italian ruling. It is also likely to bolster resistance in Ireland, where a similar activist case from the ECHR is expected to attempt to impose abortion on a state that has rejected it. Not everyone would have expected the first roll-back of Lisbon to come from Italy; but it has, so we should be heartened. Eurofederalism – just say no!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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