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Court of Justice of the European Union
Italian Constitutional Court
Preliminary reference
Taricco Case
Controlimiti
Direct effect
Abstract:
This is a commentary, written in the form of a theatrical play, to the Italian Constitutional Court's Order no. 24 addressing a preliminary reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the framework of the so-called "Taricco Saga". In the Order, the Italian Constitutional Court politely threatened to declare the Union law inapplicable in Italy insofar as it, as interpreted in a previous judgment of the CJEU, seemed to force a derogation to the constitutional nullum crimen nulla poena sine lege principle as understood in Italy. The blogpost puts the two Courts on stage and registers their weirdly frank exchanges on, inter alia, the darkest recesses of the European unwritten constitution.
