THE ITALIAN SUPREME COURT HAS DEMOLISHED
THE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED JUDGMENTS AGAINST TRIESTE
Analysis by Paolo G. Parovel, English version by Silvia Verdoljak.
Trieste, 15 September 2025. – Great news for the legal battle for the rights of the present-day Free Territory of Trieste and of its international Free Port, led by the I.P.R. F.T.T. with the Free Trieste Movement and with hundreds of citizens and enterprises from Trieste and other States.
With Order No. 17687/2024 of 18 February 2025, the Joint Sections of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed that Italian judges have full jurisdiction over breaches of international obligations of Italy committed by Italian political and administrative authorities at the expense of the rights and legitimate interests of third parties, and on the arising liabilities.
The case in point revolved on the international obligations on rescue at sea; however, in the Italian legal order decisions of the Joint Sections on matters of jurisdiction are binding for all other Courts and for the same parties in other trials (art. 59, No. 1, second paragraph of Italian Law No. 69/2009) in which the same question on jurisdiction arises.
This decision is therefore binding in all lawsuits regarding breaches of international obligations of Italy, committed by Italian authorities, at the expense of the rights and legitimate interests of third parties.
Among the legal actions bound by this decision, there are also the three civil lawsuits initiated by the I.P.R. F.T.T. — International Provisional Representative of the Free Territory of Trieste (LINK) versus Italian political and administrative authorities.
Indeed, the three lawsuits regard breaches of Italy’s international obligations towards the present-day Free Territory of Trieste and its international Free Port, at the expense of the rights and legitimate interests of the citizens, residents, and enterprises of Trieste, and of the rights and legitimate interests of the enterprises of all other States.
The three lawsuits, joined by the Free Trieste Movement (LINK) and by hundreds of citizens and enterprises, regard severe violations of the rights of taxation of natural and legal persons, and of the obligations regarding the management of the international Free Port.
The question is much simpler than it seems, because it’s not political but strictly legal.
The international obligations in force of Italy and of its Government towards Trieste and its international Free Port are established by a 1947 multilateral Peace Treaty, by a 1954 quadrilateral Memorandum of Understanding, and by other international legal instruments that confirm them.
Since 1947 up to the present day (2025), those international instruments and obligations have been fully consolidated within the Italian legal order, with domestic laws enforcing and implementing them, to which the Italian Constitution assigns primacy over all other laws in force (LINK).
Regardless of this, Italian political and administrative authorities commit breaches of those legal obligations by falsely claiming that the Free Territory of Trieste has no legal existence and never existed.
The aforementioned theses are merely a politically motivated construct of false claims concerning international legal instruments, devised after 1947 by two ultra-nationalist Italian university professors (A.E. Cammarata and M. Udina), and are perpetuated by their pupils and by certain misleading judgments of politicized judges, who applied those false theses without verification.
In particular, see the false grounds for decision of the judges of the Regional Administrative Court for Friuli Venezia Giulia in judgment No. 400/2013, to favor a massive fraud at the expense of the Northern Free Port and later reproduced in judgment 530/2013 to falsely accuse of subversion the citizens who were seeking the re-establishment of the rule of law (LINK).
Still, in the Italian Civil Law system, laws are to be enforced, not judgments.
This means false claims regarding laws enforcing international obligations can be disproved with a simple, direct judicial examination of the laws in question.
And since they are upper-ranking laws in force within the Italian legal order, any breach at the expense of third parties, regardless of who commits it, is subject to the ordinary jurisdiction of Italian courts.
For this reason, the lawsuits initiated by the I.P.R. F.T.T. document this situation and request Italian Courts to determine the legal validity and primacy of these international obligations within the Italian legal order, as well as any violations thereof.
Under the purely legal perspective, all of these lawsuits are winning, because the outcome of the Court’s assessment of the laws in force can only be favorable.
This is why the State’s Legal Service (Avvocatura dello Stato) and the other lawyers of the political and administrative authorities responsible for those violations have outrageously demanded the judges to become their accomplices, precisely:
– by refusing to carry out the due review of the laws in force and of their violations, declaring for this purpose the absolute lack of jurisdiction of any Italian Court on violations committed by political authorities;
– to endorse (therefore without prior verification) politically motivated judgments that falsely claim that legally the Free Territory of Trieste does not exist;
– to falsely charge with subversion against the Italian State anyone who says the opposite;
– to punish the appellants, ordering them to bear the full costs of the proceeding.
Still, the biggest scandal is that so far, in all three lawsuits, and in each instance of judgment, all judges involved have complied with those illegal requests of the political authorities instead of enforcing the law.
Indeed, the legal battle is ongoing, but so far all the judges have refused to review the laws and ascertain their breaches, issuing judgments in which they falsely claim absolute lack of jurisdiction; in particular, they drew the false claim of the lack of legal existence of the Free Territory of Trieste from two 2013 politically motivated decisions of the Regional Administrative Court for Friuli Venezia Giulia (TAR FVG), labeled as subversive anyone who claims the opposite, and have unfairly ordered the appellants to bear the full costs of the proceedings.
The first out of three lawsuits, which revolved on general taxation rights, ended with an obviously politically motivated, completely groundless decision of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation (LINK).
It is unclear if and how deeply the unlawful behaviors of those judges depend on personal will, political environmental pressure, or illegal interferences as those envisioned and punished in art. 1 of Italian Law No. 17/1982.
What is evident is that their judgments constitute a politically motivated, absolute refusal of justice, committed in breach of the Constitutional guarantees to a fair trial and about the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, which are the foundations of the rule of law.
And now (September 2025) pending before the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation there are the second lawsuit on taxation, regarding the VAT, and the third lawsuit, which challenges the violation of the obligations regarding the management of the international Free Port.
In both proceedings the lawyers of the political authorities presented the same scandalous requests, and the judges were getting ready to fulfill them, as they had done in previous judgments.
But the new opposite and binding decision of the Joint Sections of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation has demolished to the ground all those previous judgments based on the simulation of an absolute lack of jurisdiction, rendering them null and void, except as a clamorous example of legal error and of politically motivated denial of justice.
Furthermore, when it comes to violation of the international obligations of Italy, judges won’t be able again to invoke the absolute lack of jurisdiction, and the same applies to the political and administrative authorities summoned before Court.
Lawsuits on the matter do therefore need to be discussed on the merits, which means the nature, legal force, and rank of the breached international obligations. And in the merits, the I.P.R. F.T.T. is winning.
This makes the latest decision of the Joint Sections a clear-cut, unprecedented judicial victory for the principles of international law and of the Italian Constitutional order over the administrative and legislative abuses committed by political authorities, and, at the same time, it is a decisive victory for Trieste.
The legal action that resulted in this binding decision of the Joint Sections on matters of jurisdiction was about Italy’s international obligations on rescue at sea.
In that lawsuit, as it does in lawsuits regarding Trieste, the State’s Legal Service claimed that the Court should declare the absolute lack of jurisdiction of any Italian judge in an attempt to prevent the punishment of the political and administrative authorities responsible for the violations.
However, in that lawsuit the Joint Sections rejected the exception with an accurate and impeccable review of the law, which honors the Italian magistracy.
Indeed, the general principles of law that the Joint Sections have consolidated on the subject of the Italian State’s international obligations with their final Ordinance No. 17687/2024 of 18 February 2025 regard:
a) the binding Constitutional primacy of the Italian State’s international obligations within the hierarchy of its sources of law, because those obligations are established by International Conventions (Treaties and other Agreements) to which Italy has joined:
«le Convenzioni internazionali […] cui l’Italia ha aderito, costituiscono, dunque, un limite alla potestà legislativa dello Stato e, in base agli artt. 10, 11 e 117 della Costituzione, non possono costituire oggetto di deroga sulla base di scelte e valutazioni discrezionali dell’autorità politica, poiché assumono, in base al principio “pacta sunt servanda”, un rango gerarchico superiore rispetto alla disciplina interna».
«international Conventions […] to which Italy has joined do therefore constitute a limit to the State’s legislative authority and, under arts. 10, 11, and 117 of the Constitution, cannot be derogated from on the basis of the political authorities’ choices or discretionary evaluations because, under the principle “pacta sunt servanda”, they rank above domestic law».
Among other things, this means that any administrative or legislative measured enacted in breach of the State’s international obligations remains formally in force until it is repealed, but it is legally unenforceable because it conflicts with higher-ranking provisions in the hierarchy of sources of law and, as such, cannot be derogated from.
And example of such unenforceable laws, relating to Italy’s obligations respect to the international Free Port of Trieste, are the actions seeking the removal from State-owned property, the transfer, the sale, and the tendering procedures envisioned at paragraphs 618, 619, and 620 of art. 1 of Italian Law 190/ 2014 and their later amendments (2017, 2025).
b) the nature of the Government’s actions and measures that fall within the independent evaluation of the judiciary:
«L’azione del Governo, ancorché motivata da ragioni politiche, non può mai ritenersi sottratta al sindacato giurisdizionale quando si ponga al di fuori dei limiti che la Costituzione e la legge gli impongono».
«Regardless of its political motivation, Government action can never be considered outside the scope of judicial review when it goes beyond the limits that are imposed on it by the Constitution and the law».
It follows that no Court may consider itself exempted from the obligation to exercise its jurisdiction on decisions of the executive that go against the Constitutional framework or the State’s legislation.
c) the Constitutional relevance of the exercise of jurisdiction, which is a fundamental and necessary condition of the rule of law:
«Giurisdizione va intesa come “potere che la legge assegna e che è conforme a Costituzione che sia assegnato ai giudici perché risulti attuata nel giudizio l’effettività dello stesso ordinamento”, ed è il portato della prevalenza da assegnare, “ai fini del servizio giustizia”, all’esigenza “che l’autorità giudiziaria, vista nel suo complesso, dia risposta di merito alla domanda di giustizia”». (così in motivazione Cass. n. 5456 del 2009, cit. Parr. 9.4 – 9.5).».
«Jurisdiction means “authority assigned to the Judiciary under law and in compliance with the Constitution for the effectiveness of the legal order itself to become enforceable”, and it is “for the purposes of justice” that prevalence is placed on the necessity “that the judiciary as a whole can provide answers to legal questions”» (so the Supreme Court in case No. 5456 of 2009, see paragraphs 9.4 – 9.5)».
This decision of the Joint Sections of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation does therefore make it evident that the systematic refusal to review and enforce the laws that establish those international obligations of Italy towards the present-day Free Territory of Trieste and its international Free Port may constitute a case of political corruption within the Italian judiciary.
And it is also evident that the seriousness of the case may reach a level that allows the intervention of the competent European and international Courts, as well as the imposition of sanctions such as those that the US Department of State imposes on certain judges from other European and extra-European States.
