LE AUTORITÀ INDIPENDENTI FRA DIRITTO DELL'UNIONE E SISTEMA INTERNO DEI POTERI

The data protection authority, the antitrust authority, the bank of Italy, and the electricity, natural gas, electronic communications authorities are public bodies created by the law in order to protect constitutional rights and interests. According to the case-law of the Italian Courts, they are part of the executive branch, but not under the government supervision. There are doubts on the constitutionality of such authorities, since article 95 of the Italian constitution requires the executive branch being under the government supervision. Furthermore, the Italian constitutional Court has always denied that the independent authorities can stand before it, saying that their powers are based on the law and not on the Constitution. However, such authorities have been created in order to comply to the European Union law, and article 11 of the Constitution let the European Union law prevailing over the Italian law. First, this thesis argues that the legitimacy of the authorities is based on article 11 of the Constitution. Second, that the laws which created the authorities can derogate from article 95 of the Constitution if required by the European Union law. Finally, that the independent authorities may be part of a judgement before the Italian constitutional Court because their powers are based on article 11 of the Constitution. This implies that the European Union law modified the Italian form of government.