ORDER NO. 80
YEAR 2026
ITALIAN REPUBLIC
IN THE NAME OF THE ITALIAN PEOPLE
THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
composed of:
President: Giovanni AMOROSO;
Judges: Francesco VIGANÒ, Luca ANTONINI, Stefano PETITTI, Angelo BUSCEMA, Emanuela NAVARRETTA, Maria Rosaria SAN GIORGIO, Filippo PATRONI GRIFFI, Marco D’ALBERTI, Giovanni PITRUZZELLA, Antonella SCIARRONE ALIBRANDI, Massimo LUCIANI, Maria Alessandra SANDULLI, Roberto Nicola CASSINELLI, Francesco Saverio MARINI,
has issued the following
ORDER
in the matter of the conflict of attribution between State powers, arising from the failure of the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Ordinary Court of Rome to transmit to the Senate of the Republic the dismissal decree issued on December 15, 2022, by the Panel for Ministerial Crimes at the Ordinary Court of Rome, in the context of criminal proceedings registered under no. 9556/2022 R.G.N.R., against the then-minister Renato Brunetta, brought by the Senate of the Republic, with the petition filed in the registry on October 27, 2025, and registered as no. 8 of the 2025 register of conflicts between State powers, admissibility phase.
Having heard, in the council chamber of April 13, 2026, the Reporting Judge Francesco Viganò;
deliberated in the council chamber of April 13, 2026.
Considering that, by petition filed on October 27, 2025, the Senate of the Republic initiated a conflict of attribution between State powers against the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Ordinary Court of Rome, regarding the "failure to transmit to the Senate of the Republic the partial and 'asystematic' dismissal decree adopted by the Tribunal of Ministers on December 15, 2022," concerning the then-Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta in relation to the crime of corruption, and the simultaneous referral of the records to the public prosecutor "as regards the matters within its competence concerning other alleged crimes, deemed non-ministerial";
that, according to the petitioner, such failure to transmit "resulted in an infringement of the attributions pertaining to the Senate of the Republic regarding ministerial immunity," pursuant to Article 96 of the Constitution and Articles 5 and 8(4) of Constitutional Law no. 1 of January 16, 1989 (Amendments to Articles 96, 134, and 135 of the Constitution and to Constitutional Law no. 1 of March 11, 1953, and provisions regarding proceedings for crimes under Article 96 of the Constitution), an infringement which "prevented the constitutional body from evaluating the content of the aforementioned dismissal decree and from subsequently deliberating whether or not to raise a conflict of attribution for the infringement of its own prerogatives, as defined by the Constitutional Court judgment no. 241 of 2009";
that, according to what the petitioner reported, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome allegedly transmitted the records of criminal proceedings registered under no. 9556/2022 R.G.N.R. on March 14, 2022, to the Panel for Ministerial Crimes (the so-called Tribunal of Ministers) established at the Court of Rome, concerning three alleged crimes – specifically, corruption for the exercise of official duties (Articles 318 and 321 of the Penal Code), violation of the rules on the transparency of financing for political parties and parliamentarians (Article 7(3) of Law no. 195 of May 2, 1974, concerning "State contribution to the financing of political parties"), and ideological falsehood committed by a public official in a public document (Article 479 of the Penal Code) – attributed, among others, to Renato Brunetta and referring to the period (from February 13, 2021, to October 22, 2022) when he served as Minister for Public Administration, as well as being a Deputy of the Republic;
that the Tribunal of Ministers, after having heard the interested party and having carried out further investigations, allegedly returned the records to the Public Prosecutor’s Office so that it could proceed with the appropriate assessments in light of the investigations conducted;
that on November 22, 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office allegedly forwarded the records again to the Tribunal of Ministers, "inviting it to proceed with the reasoned report referred to in Article 8(1)" of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989 "'for transmission to the President of the Senate,' for the purposes of the request for authorization to proceed" pursuant to Article 96 of the Constitution and Article 5 of the same constitutional law, thereby identifying the Senate as the competent Chamber in the proceedings in question;
that on December 15, 2022, the Tribunal of Ministers allegedly ordered the dismissal of the proceedings in relation to the crime of corruption, "referring the records to the Public Prosecutor for matters within its competence regarding the other alleged crimes, deemed non-ministerial";
that in this manner, "a partial and 'asystematic' dismissal decree had been adopted, limited solely to the single alleged crime deemed by the Panel to be within its own specific competence";
that on December 16, 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office, however, "erroneously" communicated the dismissal decree, pursuant to Article 8(4) of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989, to the Chamber of Deputies instead of the Senate;
that the Chamber of Deputies, in the session of December 22, 2022, had made "mere announcement of the received act";
that, in the petitioner's view, based on the combined provisions of Articles 8(4) and 5 of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989, the communication of the dismissal should have been made to the Senate of the Republic, as it exclusively concerned subjects who were not, at that time, members of the Chambers;
that, as a result of the failure to communicate the dismissal decree to the Senate of the Republic, the latter had "no knowledge of the definition of the proceedings for ministerial crimes against Professor Renato Brunetta (who, by that date, was no longer a member of the Chambers)";
that, in accordance with the proposal of July 29, 2025, of the Parliamentary Elections and Immunities Board, in the session of July 30, 2025, the Senate Assembly resolved, with 122 votes in favor and 18 against, to raise a conflict of attribution;
that, regarding the subjective requirement, there are no doubts, in light of the consistent jurisprudence of this Court, as to the standing of the Senate of the Republic to raise a conflict of attribution, nor as to the passive standing of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome;
that, regarding the "objective standing," the omissive conduct of the Prosecutor’s Office allegedly precluded the petitioner from "knowledge of the dismissal decree, which was only partial regarding two ministerial crimes, the evaluation of its contents, and therefore any discretionary decision concerning the necessity or otherwise of raising a conflict of attribution against the asystematic nature of the dismissal for the protection of its own prerogatives, namely, the granting or refusal of the authorization to proceed for a ministerial crime";
that there is no doubt that even omissive conduct can be considered prejudicial to a constitutional attribution (the Court’s judgments no. 406 of 1989, no. 187 of 1984, and no. 111 of 1976 are cited);
that the failure to transmit the dismissal decree allegedly caused concrete prejudice to the sphere of attributions of the Senate of the Republic, preventing the competent Chamber from performing the aforementioned evaluations, as already clarified by this Court in judgment no. 241 of 2009;
that the existence of "actual and concrete prejudice" is further evidenced by the fact that "in the meantime, the criminal proceedings for the two ordinary (and no longer ministerial) crimes have begun and are ongoing";
that there is no doubt regarding the standing of the Senate of the Republic – and not the Chamber of Deputies – to promote this petition, since, for the purpose of identifying the Chamber competent to grant authorization to proceed for a ministerial crime, the time of the adoption of the dismissal decree is relevant and not the time of the commission of the alleged crime; thus, when at that moment – as in the present case – the person under investigation is no longer a parliamentarian, jurisdiction belongs in any case to the Senate of the Republic pursuant to Article 5(1), second sentence, of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989, which is attested to by several parliamentary precedents cited in the petition;
that, the petitioner specifies, "at this stage, the object of the conflict proposed by the Senate of the Republic does not concern the request to the Constitutional Court to ascertain whether the crimes for which Professor Brunetta is charged are of a ministerial and not an ordinary nature, but exclusively a procedurally and constitutionally harmful violation";
that for the reasons set forth above, this petition should be considered "ictu oculi well-founded," as the infringement of an attribution belonging to the Senate has "objectively and concretely occurred," and "the nature of the contested omission or the reasons for the error that led to pointlessly informing the Chamber of Deputies, an organ not competent in the matter, are of no relevance";
that "for the sake of completeness" – although this concerns "another and different question of merit," presented only to "highlight the constitutional tone of the conflict, its relevance not merely procedural and formal, and the substantive character of the infringed attributions" – the petitioner observes that "another (and different) profile of conflict could be linked to the not entirely coherent fact that the total dismissal of the principal crime (both as ministerial and as ordinary) did not also absorb the two minor, connected, and instrumental crimes," since, "[a]s the latter do not appear, at this stage, to possess an autonomous configuration, their qualification as separate autonomous ordinary offenses, even after the total dismissal of the principal crime, could lead, from another perspective, to a *fumus* of circumvention of the constitutional guarantee";
that, in conclusion, the petitioner requests that, once the admissibility of the conflict has been declared, this Court:
a) declare "that it was not for the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome to omit the transmission to the Senate of the Republic of the dismissal decree, with which the Panel had excluded the ministerial nature of two crimes attributed to the defendant, at the time when the records themselves were sent to the judicial authority competent for the ordinary criminal proceedings (which then actually began and continued)";
b) affirm that "thereby, the attributions constitutionally guaranteed to the Senate of the Republic by Article 96 of the Constitution and Articles 5 and 8 of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989 were infringed, in light of judgment no. 241 of 2009, due to the failure to transmit the partial and asystematic dismissal decree of ministerial crimes concerning a subject who is no longer a member of the two Chambers";
c) consequently order "the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Rome to perform the formal and ritually correct transmission to the Senate of the Republic of the dismissal decree of the Panel of Ministers of December 15, 2022";
d) declare, as a result, "null and void all acts of the ordinary criminal proceedings, in the meantime carried out by the judicial authority following the aforementioned asystematic dismissal decree (for ministerial crimes related to the same facts as the ordinary crimes) which were not transmitted to the competent Chamber, and therefore in the absence of the prerequisite of 'constitutional regularity' descending from Article 96 of the Constitution itself."
Considering that, at this stage of the proceedings, this Court is called upon to deliberate, in the council chamber and without adversarial proceedings, on the existence of the subjective and objective requirements prescribed by Article 37(1) of Law no. 87 of March 11, 1953 (Rules on the constitution and functioning of the Constitutional Court), i.e., to decide whether the conflict arises between organs competent to declare definitively the will of the power to which they belong and for the delimitation of the sphere of attributions defined for the various powers by constitutional norms, with all other questions, including those of admissibility, remaining without prejudice;
that, regarding the subjective requirement, the Senate of the Republic has standing to propose a conflict in order to defend the attributions pertaining to it pursuant to Articles 96 of the Constitution and 5 and 8(4) of Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989 (order no. 104 of 2011; similarly, with reference to the Chamber of Deputies, orders no. 241 of 2011 and no. 8 of 2008);
that the same nature of State power must also be recognized to the public prosecutor – and, in particular, to the Public Prosecutor of the Republic (order no. 133 of 2025) – as it is invested with the constitutionally guaranteed attribution inherent to the mandatory exercise of criminal prosecution, also with reference to the matter of ministerial crimes (orders no. 241 and no. 104 of 2011);
that with regard to the objective requirement, the petition is aimed at guaranteeing a sphere of constitutional attributions, inferable, according to the submission of the Senate of the Republic, from Article 96 of the Constitution and Constitutional Law no. 1 of 1989 (again, orders no. 241 and no. 104 of 2011);
that, pursuant to Article 37(4) of Law no. 87 of 1953, the notification of this petition must also be served upon the Chamber of Deputies, given the identity of the constitutional position of the two branches of Parliament in relation to the issues of principle to be addressed (*ex plurimis*, orders no. 133 of 2025, no. 179 of 2023, no. 250 of 2022).
for these reasons
THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
1) declares admissible, pursuant to Article 37 of Law no. 87 of March 11, 1953 (Rules on the constitution and functioning of the Constitutional Court), the petition for conflict of attribution between State powers indicated in the heading, brought by the Senate of the Republic against the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Ordinary Court of Rome;
2) orders:
a) that the registry of this Court shall provide immediate communication of this order to the Senate of the Republic;
b) that the petition and this order shall be notified, by the petitioner, to the Public Prosecutor at the Ordinary Court of Rome and to the Chamber of Deputies, within the period of thirty days from the communication referred to in point a), to be subsequently filed, with proof of service, in the registry of this Court within the period of thirty days provided for by Article 26(3) of the Supplementary Rules for proceedings before the Constitutional Court.
Decided in Rome, at the seat of the Constitutional Court, Palazzo della Consulta, on April 13, 2026.
Signed:
Giovanni AMOROSO, President
Francesco VIGANÒ, Reporter
Igor DI BERNARDINI, Clerk
Filed in the Registry on May 14, 2026