The National Electoral Office at the Court of Cassation accepts the appeal of Alternativa Popolare by Stefano Bandecch ie admits the list to participate in the European elections. AP had appealed against the decision of the Court of Appeal of Rome to exclude the list from the central constituency. The Court of Appeal of Naples had instead admitted Ap’s list.
“The Popular Alternative list – writes the National Electoral Office at the Court of Cassation – meets the requirement of certified affiliation with a European political party constituted as a parliamentary group in the European Parliament in the current legislature at the time of convening the electoral rallies and must be admitted to participate in the election of the members of the European Parliament due to Italy”. AP is affiliated with the EPP and has the name ‘EPP’ in its symbol.
The National Electoral Office at the ‘Palazzaccio’, considered the last decree law converted by the Chambers, thus motivates its decision by explaining that there are “two distinct hermeneutic options, both plausible: one which imposes two requirements for the exemption (seat already obtained in the European Parliament and certified affiliation to a group established therein); the other which, in coherence with the previous text of the same fourth paragraph of art. 12, and with the related interpretative tradition formed starting from the previous ones this Office of 2014, places the aforementioned two requirements as alternatives to each other.
The Office believes to give priority to second hermeneutic option, believing it more compliant with the relevant constitutional principles, as summarized (albeit for other purposes) in the well-known ruling n. 1 of 2014 of the Constitutional Court, both to Recommendation (EU) 2023/2829, whose recital no. 10 states: ‘The stability of electoral law is fundamental for the integrity and credibility of electoral processes. Frequent rule changes or changes occurring just before elections they can confuse voters and voting workers and can lead to distortions or incorrect applications of the rules. Such changes may also be perceived as a tool intended to influence outcomes in favor of the existing government. In accordance with Guideline II.2.b of the Code of Good Electoral Conduct (6) published by the European Commission for Democracy through Law of the Council of Europe (the “Venice Commission”), the fundamental elements of the national electoral law should not be able to be changed less than one year before the elections. These fundamental elements include in particular the rules relating to the transformation of votes into seats, membership of electoral commissions or other bodies that organize voting, as well as the definition of the boundaries of electoral constituencies and the distribution of seats between constituencies. While it is not appropriate to invoke the principle of stability of electoral law to maintain a situation inconsistent with international electoral standards, nothing in this recommendation should be understood as an invitation to Member States to take measures inconsistent with Guideline II .2.b of the aforementioned code of good electoral conduct'”.
It is unlikely,in fact – concludes the Court of Cassation – that “the legislator, while the 180-day deadline for collecting signatures is pending, and moreover only during the conversion of Legislative Decree no. 7 of 2024, intended to deliberately overturn the previous rules regarding exemption from subscriptions, configuring affiliation as an additional requirement only for political parties or groups already represented in the European Parliament, and ignoring it, however, for those already represented in one of the two Chambers of the Italian Parliament”.