The unquestionability of regional councillors and the effect on the liability judgment for damage to the treasury

Abstract

The paper aims to analyse the issue of the extension of regional councillors’ unquestionability, as a constitutional guarantee provided for the protection of the independence and freedom of the members of the Regional Council, in order to ensure the certainty and continuity of its use, without the danger of interruptions or suspensions that would nullify and dissolve its functionality. In particular, there emerges the need to reconstruct the scope of application of this prerogative with particular regard to the possible interferences that may arise from the exercise of the action for liability for damage to the treasury in the light of the most recent constitutional jurisprudence, which has taken a different stance depending on whether the hypothesis of a vote cast during the approval of the accounts of the council groups and the material activity of managing the public resources intended for the relative operation, as well as council resolutions relating to non-legislative acts, is involved. In this perspective, it seems appropriate to retrace the hermeneutic itinerary of the Constitutional Court in an attempt to ascertain how the conflict of attribution can be valued, according to the authoritative teaching of Galeotti, in order to ensure that the guarantee of Article 122, paragraph 4, of the Italian Constitution operates without interruption and without “intrusions” that might result from the deployment of initiatives of the judicial authority.