Italy

The year 2020 will certainly be remembered for a long time because of the devastating impact of the global pandemic on every aspect of private and public life. The impact of the pandemic was significant also on the constitutional systems throughout the world, and Italy was not an exemption from this. Moreover, significant constitutional developments occurred independently of the pandemic: with a constitutional referendum held in September, the Italian electorate approved a constitutional amendment significantly reducing the number of MPs. However, this report will focus primarily on judicial developments. Within this field, the impact of the pandemic on the case law of the Italian Constitutional Court (ICC) remained limited until the end of the year, and will most likely emerge massively in 2021 (see section IV). However, 2020 has been marked with important developments for the ICC. This report concentrates, firstly, on some significant innovations in the management of constitutional trials with regard to some changes to the internal procedural rules of the Court with the aim of opening new channels of communication with the ICC (Section II). Secondly, the report explores some significant developments in case law in 2020 (Section III).