With ruling number 148 , filed today, the Constitutional Court rejected the state's objections to the entire Sardinia Region law number 26 of 2025, regarding assisted suicide, but declared several of its provisions unconstitutional.
As already held in sentence number 204 of 2025 regarding the Tuscany Region law number 16 of 2025, contested by the State with substantially similar objections, the Sardinian regional law also pertains to the matter of health protection , limiting itself to regulating the activity of local health authorities .
However, the Court explains that many of its provisions have unlawfully invaded spheres of competence reserved to state legislation.
THE POINTS – The rejection concerns Article 2, paragraph 1 , which violates the exclusive legislative competence of the state in matters of civil and criminal law , since, by recalling the rulings on assisted suicide, "it creates a novelty of the regulatory principles contained therein, which has the effect of defining in regional legislation, by making them more rigid, the requirements for access to assisted suicide and, indirectly, the contours of the exemption under Article 580 of the Criminal Code as identified by the rulings of this Court". In fact, regional legislation, in relation to the delicate balances that pertain to medically assisted suicide, "cannot claim to act in a supplementary manner to state legislation , so to speak 'appropriating' the regulatory principles identified by this Court", crystallizing them in its own provisions, the judges argue.
Article 4 was declared unconstitutional in that it "establishes stringent deadlines for the conduct" of the process to verify the eligibility requirements for physician-assisted suicide by the multidisciplinary commission, after obtaining the opinion of the local ethics committee. Article 4, paragraph 12, by granting the person who meets the requirements authorized to access physician-assisted suicide the ability to "decide at any time to suspend or cancel the provision of treatment," is found to be "completely inconsistent with the very structure of physician-assisted suicide," in which "there is no actual 'provision' of treatment that can be suspended or canceled (as in the case of active euthanasia, which in Italian law is classified as consenting homicide), but rather 'healthcare assistance' to a person who must himself or herself carry out the final act that directly causes his or her own death."
(Unioneonline)
