Corte costituzionale e giustiziabilità dell’equilibrio di bilancio: dal principio alle regole (e ritorno)

May the balanced budget principle be enforced by the Constitutional Court? Is it actually a principle, or an aggregate of different norms, some of them open-ended? How does this influence its application? After some preliminary clarifications (§ 1), the essay surveys the Italian legal scholarship on the justiciability of the balanced budget clauses in Italian law (constitutional law no. 1/2012). It also provides some updates and comments on the enforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact in the EU (§ 3) and on the vicissitudes of the Fiscal Compact (§ 4), as well as on the Italian case law on financial issues (§ 5). It concludes (§ 6) – in line with the findings of the leading doctrine – that, having regard to the balanced budget principle in a strict sense, the Constitutional Court has a limited role, due to procedural and substantive reasons and constraints, including the very nature of that principle in its original ground, which is EU law. These conclusions can be placed in a wider theoretical perspective, which emphasizes the highly political nature of the budget and its constitutional regulation (§ 7).