Analysis
Italian magistrates blasted the Security Decree for ‘serious issues of methodology and merit’
Since it was published on Saturday in the Official Gazette, the Decree has already caused chaos. In particular, from the very first hours it sent thousands of entrepreneurs and operators of “cannabis light” stores into a tailspin.
Last Monday, after being in effect for just 36 hours, the Security Decree was already facing serious accusations of unconstitutionality.
First and foremost, it was the National Association of Magistrates, that pointed to clear unconstitutional features – already called into question by the defense of a defendant who raised the issue before the Milan Court – in the Security Decree, which on Monday was assigned to the Chamber's Constitutional Affairs and Justice committees for conversion into law within 60 days.
In the wake of the complaint already presented by criminal lawyers and numerous academics before the government changed tactics on the beleaguered Security Bill and copied all its provisions verbatim into the Decree, the association of magistrates admonished the government and Parliament on the “serious issues of methodology and merit” posed by the new measure, which has all of a sudden introduced “14 new crimes, with more severe penalties for 9 other crimes,” and which dodged “a fruitful debate in Parliament that had been going on for more than a year” while blatantly failing to demonstrate the “requirements [for the passing of a Decree – n.tr.] of an extraordinary situation, of a case of necessity and urgency.”
Nevertheless, Interior Minister Piantedosi has already announced they are planning “additional measures” to protect law enforcement.
Since it was published on Saturday in the Official Gazette, the Decree has already caused chaos. In particular, from the very first hours it sent thousands of entrepreneurs and operators of “cannabis light” stores into a tailspin, who don’t know what they can do with their legally bought goods (hemp products not containing THC that the Decree bans – n.tr.) and who are now looking towards foreign markets as their only hope. It has also sent police phone lines into confusion, as they are unable to give firm answers on the applicability of some of the most nonsensical regulations of the package which has been nicknamed the “Save Salvini” Decree. Among others, former Undersecretary of Justice Franco Corleone has spoken out against the decree and has gone on a hunger strike until Easter, hoping for a mobilization against the decree's conversion into law.
“In the face of the criminalization of passive and nonviolent resistance in prisons, it is necessary that we demonstrate outside the jails with original forms of civil disobedience,” Corleone writes, speaking of “a mass uprising, also through a popular referendum, to cancel the wantonly criminalizing approach that becomes ridiculous when it equates textile hemp with cannabis used for treatment and for pleasure.”
The central executive leadership of the National Association of Magistrates, which calls for “corrections” in the process of converting the decree into law, is pointing to the “new offenses aimed at disproportionately punishing conduct that is often the result of social marginality, not lifestyle choices,” included in a decree “that is not easily reconciled with the constitutional principles of degree of offense, severity of punishment, reasonableness and proportionality.”
“It’s enough to consider,” the AMN writes, "that the penalty for squatting is the same as that for manslaughter as a result of violations of occupational safety regulations. Moreover, criminalizing passive resistance in prisons and Repatriation Detention Centers, and thus nonviolent resistance and the simple manifestation of dissent, produces criminogenic effects, with the real risk that the condition of detention will become the occasion for the imposition of new and additional sentences."
Furthermore, the magistrates stress, “despite the very serious situation in the prisons, which has been repeatedly denounced, new cases of exclusion of alternative measures or sentence reductions are introduced, in addition to prison for pregnant women,” without providing any “measures to cope with the dramatic situation of penitentiary institutions or to strengthen the instruments available to the supervisory judiciary.”
As usual, the majority dismissed the magistrates’ complaints as undue interference. According to Maurizio Gasparri, “the criticism of the ANM will not affect the work of Parliament, which, overcoming the obstructionism of the left, will vote as soon as possible on the Security Decree, including through a confidence vote.” The FI senator was full of praise, together with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani from Osaka, about Piantedosi's announcement that the government is determined “to pursue every further measure necessary to guarantee the safety of men and women in uniform.”
Among the many repressive measures of the decree, there is one that creates a serious conflict with a production industry already well-established in Italy and protected by European law, that of “cannabis light” stores, a substance that does not contain psychotropic active ingredients above the legal limits and whose trade has always been deemed not subject to the Single Law 309/90 on narcotics by a number of court rulings, including the 2019 ruling of the joint criminal sections of the Supreme Court.
Worst of all, the Security Decree, “by not providing for a transitional regime, is penalizing Italian entrepreneurs to the advantage of those in other countries,” as lawyer Giuseppe Libutti of the Italian Hemp Sativa Association explained to il manifesto. Antonella Soldo of Meglio Legale points out that “implementing decrees are missing”: for example, “many cannabis light sellers have already paid advance IRPEF taxes and VAT on the products stocked in order to be sold, and they don’t know how to get that money back.”
Precisely for this reason, +Europa Secretary Riccardo Magi announced “a question to the government on protecting businesses in the sector from a fiscal point of view,” while “not excluding any instrument, including a repeal referendum.” Because, he says, “a country in which a government decides overnight, by decree, that something that until the day before was legal and legitimate and guaranteed jobs for thousands of people has become illegal is a country that scares me.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/incostituzionale-dalla-nascita-il-dl-sicurezza-fa-gia-acqua on 2025-04-15