L'interpretazione conforme alla CEDU: una mappatura a dieci anni dalle sentenze "gemelle" della corte costituzionale

The article provides an overview of the jurisprudence of the Italian Constitutional Court (ICC) in the last ten years after the seminal “twin cases” no. 348 and no. 349 of 2007 on the supra-legislative status of the ECHR. The alternative posed by the ICC in those cases between consistent interpretation of the legislative provision in the light of the relevant ECHR articles and the referral of a constitutional question in order to have the legislative provision quashed by the ICC has been put under strain for several reasons. The article focuses on the apparent technicality of consistent interpretation as a device for eluding value conflicts between national Constitution and the ECHR: on the one hand, it is not possible to overtly interpret constitutional provisions consistently with the ECHR for reasons others than the lower status of the latter; on the other hand, it is no more possible to overtly interpret Convention provisions consistently with the Italian Constitution, at the cost of ignoring the case-law of the Strasbourg Court and incurring repetitive condemnations. The analysis of the jurisprudence reflects a picture of the relationship between national legal order and the ECHR which is more complex than this.