«I have just won the appeal in the Court of Cassation» «and I am also in central Italy». Thus the mayor of Terni and leader of Alternativa Popolare Stefano Bandecchion Instagram, after the outcome of the appeal presented for the exclusion of all the constituencies except the South from its lists.
«And I've heard of imbeciles, like Ferranti: someone who is a politician in the Terni council and who today acted like a teacher telling me that “I'm a crybaby because I want to go to the EU elections but it's not my job”.
«The Popular Alternative list – writes the National Electoral Office at the Court of Cassation – satisfies the requirement of certified affiliation with a European political party established 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 Italy's members of the European Parliament”. AP is affiliated to the PPE and has the name 'PPE' in its symbol.
It is unlikely, in fact – concludes the Court of Cassation – that «the legislator, during the period of 180 days. for the collection of signatures, 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”.
The national electoral office at the Court of Cassation, considering the last decree law converted by the Chambers, motivates its decision as follows: there are «two distinct hermeneutic options, both plausible: one which imposes two requirements for exemption ( seat already obtained in the European Parliament and certified affiliation to a group established there); the other that, consistently with the previous text of the same fourth paragraph of the 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 attribute prevalence to the second hermeneutical option, considering it more compliant with both the constitutional principles on the matter, as summarized (albeit for other purposes) in the well-known ruling no. 1 of 2014 of the Constitutional Court, and Recommendation (EU) 2023/2829, whose recital no. 10 states: 'The stability of electoral law is fundamental to the integrity and credibility of electoral processes. Frequent changes to the rules or changes occurring immediately before elections may confuse voters and poll workers and may lead to distortions or misapplications 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 the Law of the Council of Europe (the “Venice Commission”), the key elements of national electoral law They 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 the vote, as well as the definition of 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 States. members to adopt measures in conflict with guideline II.2.b of the aforementioned code of good electoral conduct”.