The Charter Awakens. The European Social Charter as a Yardstick for Constitutional Review in Italy

The paper offers an overview of the role played by the Eu-ropean Social Charter in the Italian legal system. The topic swift-ly attracted the attention of legal scholars in 2018, right after the Constitutional Court had recognised a parametric status to the Charter in reviewing ordinary legislation. The Court’s rulings relied on the principles previously applied to the European Con-vention on Human Rights, albeit with some notable differences that are here discussed in detail. After describing the initial, less significant phases of the Charter in domestic law, the paper fo-cuses on the most recent developments by analysing their prem-ises and effects on the implementation of the protected rights and by comparing the different techniques adopted to incorporate the ECHR (and EU law) into constitutional adjudication.