## Facts

- The Autonomous Region of Sardinia enacted Regional Law No. 7/2006 establishing a *Consulta* (special committee) tasked with drafting a proposal for a new special regional statute.
- The law’s title and several provisions described the project as a “new statute of autonomy and sovereignty of the Sardinian people” and referred to the “foundational reasons of autonomy and sovereignty” of the Sardinian people.
- The President of the Council of Ministers (on behalf of the State) filed a principal action for constitutional review challenging the law’s title and specified provisions, arguing that attributing “sovereignty” to the Sardinian people conflicted with the Constitution’s allocation of sovereignty to a single people and with the Republic’s unity.
- Sardinia defended the law, asserting the term “sovereignty” was political-symbolic, intended to express identity and autonomy within the constitutional order, and did not claim a separate legal sovereignty.
- The Court addressed preliminary objections and limited the case to the constitutionality of using the term “sovereignty” in the challenged title and provisions.

## Issues

1. Whether a region may characterize its institutional status and future statute as involving the “sovereignty of the Sardinian people” consistent with constitutional principles assigning sovereignty to the people of the Republic and affirming the Republic’s unity.
2. Whether the challenged parts of the State’s application were inadmissible because the asserted review parameters were not properly specified in the authorizing governmental deliberation or were otherwise not pertinent.

## Decision

- The Court declared unconstitutional the challenged title and provisions of Regional Law No. 7/2006 insofar as they used the term “sovereignty” in association with the Sardinian people and the future statute.
- The Court upheld the Region’s ability to establish a consultative body and pursue a new statute within the framework of regional autonomy and identity, but without asserting “sovereignty.”
- The Court declared inadmissible additional parts of the State’s challenge that relied on review parameters not properly identified in the authorizing deliberation or deemed not pertinent.
- The practical effect was to preserve the *Consulta* mechanism while removing “sovereignty” language from the law.

## Legal Principles

- In the constitutional order, regions are “autonomous” entities within the Republic; constitutional and special-statute terminology describing regional powers is autonomy, not sovereignty.
- Popular sovereignty belongs to the single people of the Republic and is exercised in the forms and within the limits set by the Constitution; it does not include separate regional sovereignties.
- The Republic’s unity and indivisibility permit wide regional autonomy, including special autonomy, but exclude legal claims implying multiple sovereign peoples within the State.
- Constitutional review in a principal action is limited by the parameters properly authorized and specified; unsupported or non-pertinent parameters render corresponding claims inadmissible.
- External or international limitations on state sovereignty (including those connected to European integration) do not justify internal fragmentation of sovereignty among regions.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated Sardinia’s statutory references to a “sovereignty of the Sardinian people,” holding that regional identity and special autonomy may be pursued through constitutionally bounded mechanisms, but the legal vocabulary of sovereignty is incompatible with a unitary and indivisible Republic recognizing regions as autonomous, not sovereign.


Pres. of the Council of Ministers v. Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Constitutional Case No. 365/2007 (It. Const. Ct. 2007)