L'influenza del diritto europeo sul diritto italiano: il caso Grande Stevens

Abstract THE INFLUENCE OF EUROPEAN LAW ON ITALIAN LAW: THE CASE GRANDE STEVENS This paper deals with the relationship between international and domestic law, highlighting that the European Court of Human Rights has claimed its independence from national case-law in the interpretation of the legal nature of the various institutions and also in the evaluation of a sanction as a criminal or administrative penalty. After a general introduction, the paper focuses on the behaviour of the Contracting States which are not only called to execute the judgments of ECHR in the cases where they are part, but must take account of judgements given in other cases because of the impact that these may and should play in the internal system and related legal practices. Even earlier, the national Court is bound to give national law an ECHR-oriented interpretation, that is, a meaning of the Convention that is consistent with the interpretation provided by the ECHR. The author focuses on the analysis of the well-known case Grande Stevens, as an authoritative testimony of how European law has influenced the national system: on the one hand, the increasing exploitation of the ne bis in idem in the Court of Strasbourg’s case law diminished the system of dual sanctioning, without however abolishing it; on the other hand, the inevitability of the right to a fair trial, the bulwark of any democratic State, has led the national law to state that the Consob Regulation does not comply with this principle, resulting in a modification of the Regulation by the same independent Authority.