Climate, the Court of Rome rejected the first lawsuit against the Italian State

The Civil Court of Rome has stopped the first lawsuit initiated against the Italian State for failure to comply with the climate crisis.In fact, at first instance, the judges pronounced a sentence according to which the case, the result of the "Last Judgment" campaign - carried out by 203 appellants including associations and private citizens -, was inadmissible due to lack of jurisdiction.In our country, unlike what happens in other European states, there are no courts capable of expressing a verdict on this issue.The procedural process started after a complaint presented against the Italian State by 24 associations, 17 minors and 162 adults, who in the summer of 2021 joined forces to ask concrete actions to combat global warming.Now, following the Court's verdict, the campaign coordinators are promising battle, anticipating that they will challenge the decision.

The appellants, in particular, they asked that the State could be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 92%, compared to 1990 levels, by 2030.In response to the complaint, the judges recall in the sentence, the court was formed Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which "while highlighting the awareness on the part of the defendant Administration, and more generally of the Italian authorities, of the serious problems indicated by the plaintiffs", objected to "the inadmissibility of the request made" and "the lack of jurisdiction of the ordinary judge" , as well as "the lack of legitimacy to act of individual citizens and plaintiff associations holding a mere simple and de facto interest, not qualified or differentiated from that of the general community" and "the lack of State responsibility, in the absence of a civil obligation of States towards individuals regarding the interventions to be adopted and established by supranational sources, given the planetary nature of the phenomenon of global warming".The government also specified that the request for conviction would have resulted in an “inadmissible intrusion of judicial power within the competences of Parliament and the Government, thereby violating the superior principle of the separation of powers".In expressing its opinion on the controversy, the Court has, in fact, agreed with the executive, stating that the interest for which the appellants have invoked compensatory protection "does not fall within the category of legally protected subjective interests", since "decisions relating to the methods and timing of management of the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change [...] fall within the sphere of attribution of political bodies", therefore not being "sanctioned in today's judgment".The judges therefore conclude by sanctioning the questions through which the actors ask to ascertain the responsibility of the State and to condemn it to adopt the necessary initiatives for the reduction of emissions by 2030 are "inadmissible for absolute lack of jurisdiction of the Court in question".

Worldwide, there are over a thousand ongoing legal cases related to the climate crisis.And some have also been particularly successful, as happened in Germany, where the German Constitutional Court forced the Berlin government to change its climate law by ordering it to make it more severe and ambitious, but also in the Netherlands and Ireland.Something that, evidently, cannot happen in Italy, at least in the short term.«It's about a missed opportunity for social and environmental issues in our country – ha declared Marica Di Pierri, spokesperson for the A Sud organization and co-coordinator of the "Last Judgment" campaign - but the Rome court's desire not to express itself does not mean that there are no conditions for a conviction by the State.We cannot deny that we are disappointed with the outcome of the trial and it is certain that we will appeal the decision."The legal team that followed the case, made up of lawyers and jurists belonging to the Legality for the Climate Network, said they were convinced that the ruling stands «clearly in conflict with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and with the ECHR, protection instruments that do not include limits on access to the judge in climate issues, as already recognized by the jurisprudence of numerous European states".According to the lawyers, the sentence would be "contradictory", since "on the one hand, it recognizes the seriousness and lethal urgency of the climate emergency, on the other, however, it establishes that in Italy there would be no possibility of turning to a judge to obtain preventive protection against this situation, despite the fact that such protection has been recognized by the Constitutional Court".For this reason, "all the conditions to challenge it" would therefore exist

[by Stefano Baudino]