Il "Giusto processo" amministrativo - La tutela giurisdizionale dell'individuo nei confronti della Pubblica Amministrazione alla luce del diritto dell'Unione europea e della Convenzione europea dei diritti dell'uomo

The object of this piece of work concerns the safeguards granted to the individual under the Italian administrative trial. More specifically the work is dedicated to the guarantees provided to the individuals by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and European Union law. The ECHR and the EU law (the latter, in particular, through the Charter of Fundamental Rights) provide individuals with a series of procedural guarantees whose compliance is the basis for the "fair trial". The administrative trial, however, presents some peculiarities that generate a number of doubts in the practical application of such guarantees. The Public Administration (necessary part of this judgment) from the procedural stage is already bound to comply with certain principles (therefore much earlier than the commencement of any litigation). Such principles are imposed by the law, Constitution, ECHR and EU law in order to achieve a "fair administrative trial". By consequence, the administrative act should therefore be "legitimate" in itself. Furthermore, while the claimant is pursuing its own (legitimate) individual interest, which may have been harmed by the contested measure or unlawful conduct adopted by the Public Administration, the aim pursued by the administration itself is only the overall interest of the community. The administrative trial contains an internal asymmetry between the positions of the parties involved. Such asymmetry is originated by the presumption of legality of the administrative actions, as well as by the public interest on which it is linked. In fact, under Italian law, as well as in most European countries, Administrative trial has always been separated from the civil trial. The question of the balance between the values at stake as a fundamental valuation criteria for the Constitutional Court, the Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice, is absolutely unique in this field. How much the procedural rights of the individuals shall be safeguarded when such protection inevitably collides with the overriding public interest that the Public Administration shall enforce (which in turn takes the form of defense of other fundamental values, also protected by the Constitution, the ECHR and Union law)? In the development of this work the way in which the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice deal with this difficult balance will also be analyzed. The analysis will be focused in particular on the case law of the Italian administrative procedure law. In addition, special attention will be paid to the way the Italian Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation and the Trial Court deal with the jurisprudence of the European courts. The outcome is the finding of the existence of various levels of dialectical relationship between the jurisdictions which are characterized by moments of dialogue and other of breaking. Therefore the target is finding an "European" concept of "administrative fair trial" and analyzing in which way it practically develops within the Italian law. In this sense, no one can hardly overlook the objective efforts made by the legislator who, through the reform of article 111 of the Constitution and the entry into force of the Code of Administrative Procedure (CPA), has shown the intention of incorporating into our system the principles of fair trial as outlined (also) through an alignment of the levels of protection granted in the civil and in the administrative trial. However, despite these efforts, in some fields of Italian procedural law, it still persists a situation of advantage in favour to the Public Administration. The work is divided in three chapters. In the first one, after an overview of the universal generic obligations suitable to affect the administrative process in Europe, we will try to determine which guarantees the ECHR and the EU law (and, particularly, the Bill of Rights) are applicable to the administrative trial. In the second, the investigation focuses on the ways the Italian law suits the procedural guarantees of the ECHR and the EU law and on the possible intersections (both from the perspective of conflict and integration) between such guarantees or between them and the Constitution. This will be obtained by not forgetting the need for a coordination between the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights and Constitutional Court. In the third chapter, after a brief presentation of the Italian system of split of jurisdiction, the investigation focuses on the manner in which the domestic, international and EU courts have organized the delicate balance that is studied in this work. This is done by outlining some problematic issues that arise in practice in the application of the principle of fair trial in the Italian administrative procedural system. To do this, it will be indicated some possible solutions related to certain interpretative issues still unresolved in our domestic law, or about cases of clear incompatibility between Italian law and the principle of fair trial, through an interpretation of internal rules that guarantees the enforcement of human rights. Upon completion of this work, based on the outcome outlined herein, the reader shall be able to understand if the process of development of the individuals' rights in the administrative process has arrived at a stable point of compromise between opposing interests, or rather should continue and overlaps to areas where the public administration still enjoys the typical privileges deriving from its particular status