It is not unconstitutional in its overall structure, but it violates the powers of the State in several respects.
This is the Constitutional Court's judgment on the Tuscany Region's law on end-of-life care and medically assisted suicide.
The Constitutional Court has established that the regional legislation , as a whole, falls within the exercise of concurrent legislative power in matters of health protection, with the aim of dictating organizational and procedural rules to ensure uniform assistance, by the regional health service, to people requesting assistance in dying.
However, numerous provisions have been deemed illegitimate because they invade areas reserved for state legislation.
In particular, the Court declared Article 2 unconstitutional, which directly identified the requirements for access to physician-assisted suicide, citing rulings no. 242 of 2019 and no. 135 of 2024.
According to the judges, the Region cannot intervene in "delicate balances" involving civil and criminal law, nor can it act in a supplementary manner to the state legislature, appropriating the principles established by the Court itself.
Articles 5 and 6 were also rejected, insofar as they set stringent deadlines for verifying the requirements and defining the procedures for implementing the procedure. This regulation, according to the Constitutional Court, requires uniform treatment across the country and cannot be fragmented by regional interventions.
Finally, Article 7, paragraph 1, which required local health authorities to provide technical, pharmacological, and healthcare support for self-administration of the drug, was unconstitutional. In this case, too, the Court found an encroachment on state jurisdiction.
In its reasoning, however, the Constitutional Court clarifies that the absence of a comprehensive national law on end-of-life care does not preclude the Regions from intervening on an organizational and procedural level, since the fundamental principles of the matter are already deducible from current legislation, read in light of previous constitutional rulings.
Meanwhile, Tuscany Region President Eugenio Giani is satisfied and asserts the legitimacy of the regional initiative : "The Court," he states, "recognizes the content and overall value of our intervention on an issue from which the State has remained absent, despite the Constitutional Court's invitation as early as 2019."
For Giani, the ruling confirms "the right of the Regions to legislate" on physician-assisted suicide and highlights that Tuscany was the first to do so, despite the government's request to repeal the law.
(Unioneonline/Fr. Me.)
