Abstract
Just as climate litigation is on the rise globally, increasingly more climate cases are brought before Italian courts. On February 26, 2024, the Civil Tribunal of Rome has rendered its decision in the A Sud v. Italy case, also dubbed by its promoters as Giudizio Universale (Last Judgment) as part of a larger public campaign. The claim that Italy is violating a series of fundamental rights, including the right to a stable and safe climate, for its insufficient climate action was not decided upon by the Italian court that declared itself incompetent to hear this case. An appeal is in the making by the case proponents.
After briefly recapping the main points of the Italian judgment, this article discusses the relationship between this decision and another historic and most awaited judgment released by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on April 9, 2024, in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland case. In line with the unanimous argument that this case will enormously influence climate litigation in Europe, this article aims to show how this cornerstone decision by the ECtHR can likely influence the fate of the appeal in A Sud v. Italy: The existence of a link between climate change and human rights and the two-tier margin of appreciation doctrine inaugurated by the ECtHR make the inadmissibility of the claim in the A Sud v. Italy decision highly questionable.