Order issued at the hearing of January 23, 2024, and annexed to Judgment No. 22 of 2024

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

ORDER

Having regard to the documents relating to the constitutional legitimacy proceedings regarding Article 2, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree No. 23 of March 4, 2015 (Provisions on open-ended employment contracts with increasing protection, implementing Law No. 183 of December 10, 2014), initiated by the Court of Cassation, Labour Division, with Order of April 7, 2023, registered under No. 83 of the 2023 Orders Register and published in the Official Gazette of the Republic No. 26, first special series, of the year 2023.

Noting that, with a document filed on July 12, 2023, T. spa intervened in the proceedings, which does not have the status of a party in the main proceedings;

that the intervener, a public limited company with a prevailing local public capital, concessionaire for local public transport in the Province of P., asserts the inadmissibility of the constitutional legitimacy issue, due to lack of motivation and relevance, because it would be based on the erroneous assumption of the continuing operation of the disciplinary boards and, therefore, of the nullity of the disciplinary proceedings and the dismissal/removal of the railway worker imposed by the employer without the intervention of such body;

that T. spa, in the brief filed in proximity of the hearing, specifies that it has no interest in opposing the acceptance of the issue raised by the referring court for excess of delegation, but only in contesting the thesis of the survival of the disciplinary boards.

Considering that the aforementioned intervener is not a party to the main proceedings;

that Article 4, paragraph 3, of the Supplementary Rules for Proceedings before the Constitutional Court establishes that, in incidental proceedings, «[t]hose who hold a qualified interest, directly and immediately related to the relationship brought before the court» may intervene;

that, as reiterated by the constant jurisprudence of this Court (ex plurimis, Judgments No. 159 of 2019 and No. 237 of 2013; orders annexed to Judgments No. 130 of 2023, No. 158 of 2020, No. 206 of 2019 and No. 16 of 2017), participation in the incidental constitutional legitimacy proceedings is limited, as a rule, to the parties of the *a quo* proceedings, as well as to the President of the Council of Ministers and, in the case of regional law, to the President of the Regional Council (Articles 3 and 4 of the Supplementary Rules);

that in this context only the intervention of third parties who hold a qualified interest, immediately related to the substantive relationship brought before the court and not simply regulated, like any other, by the provision subject to censure, is permitted;

that, therefore, the intervention is admissible only in the event that the impact on the subjective position of the intervener does not derive, as for all other substantive situations governed by the censured provision, from the ruling on the constitutional legitimacy of the law itself, but is an immediate and direct consequence of the effect that the ruling of this Court would produce on the substantive relationship object of the *a quo* proceedings (orders annexed to Judgments No. 130 of 2023, No. 210 of 2021, No. 158 and No. 30 of 2020, No. 206 and No. 253 of 2019; Judgments No. 180 of 2021 and No. 46 of 2021);

that, in light of these premises, T. spa, finding the fundamental reason for its intervention in the simple analogy of its substantive position in a region different from that of the defendant in the main proceedings, cannot be considered to be the holder of a specific interest directly attributable to the object of the main proceedings, which legitimizes its intervention in the incidental constitutional proceedings (Judgment No. 130 of 2023 and No. 106 of 2019; Order No. 191 of 2021);

that the intervention must therefore be declared inadmissible.

For These Reasons

THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

declares the intervention in the proceedings of T. spa inadmissible.

Signed: Augusto Antonio Barbera, President