The ECtHR Judgment in Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v. Italy: A First Note

Prof. Pierluigi Consorti
University of Pisa

ITA Version: urly.it/31f-yz 

The real novelty of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in *Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v. Italy*, delivered on 11 June 2026, is not simply that the Jehovah’s Witnesses won a case against Italy. It is that Strasbourg has transformed a problem traditionally regarded as political, the failure to complete an *intesa* (agreement between the State and a religious denomination), into a question of religious equality and procedural guarantees.

The decision was by no means a foregone conclusion. Under Italian law, religious denominations have no right to obtain an *intesa* with the State. The Constitution provides that relations between the State and denominations other than the Catholic Church are to be regulated by statute “on the basis of agreements” (*intese*), but it lays down no detailed procedure for reaching that outcome. The Constitutional Court, in a well-known decision, held that the opening of negotiations falls within the political discretion of the Government. That interpretation is questionable, and it has indeed been criticised. The case now decided by Strasbourg, however, presents a different profile.

What was at issue here was not merely the failure to open negotiations. Negotiations had been opened, the agreement had been reached, and the text had been signed by the Government on several occasions. What never took place was the final parliamentary stage. Parliament neither approved the *intesa* nor rejected it. It simply left it in abeyance, without a clear decision and without effective remedies.

The judgment matters not because it changes the rules, but because it sanctions parliamentary inertia or, perhaps more precisely, the absence of an ecclesiastical policy capable of taking responsibility for its own decisions. Strasbourg does not say that the Italian Parliament was obliged to approve the agreement. It does say, however, that a religious denomination cannot be left for decades in an institutional limbo, excluded from the benefits attached to an *intesa*, without transparent criteria, without reasonable timeframes, and without a reviewable decision.

From this perspective, the judgment touches a raw nerve in the Italian system. For many years it was assumed that the flexibility of the constitutional framework was sufficient. I myself have often argued that the Constitution already offered the instruments needed to guarantee religious freedom, and that the main problem lay in their proper application. The Strasbourg Court, by contrast, invites reflection on an aspect that in Italy has probably been underestimated: the absence of procedural rules can itself become a source of inequality.

This does not necessarily mean that Italy must make the system of *intese* more rigid or turn it into an automatic process. On the contrary, the most useful lesson may be a different one: the ways in which the State engages in dialogue with religious communities need to be made more transparent, accountable and inclusive. Bilateralism is not merely a vertical relationship between the Government and a religious denomination, destined to end in parliamentary approval or rejection; it denotes a broader method of institutional cooperation, capable of responding concretely to people’s religious needs.

A further innovative aspect of the judgment concerns the *otto per mille* mechanism (the scheme allocating a share of income-tax revenue to religious denominations). The Court attaches significance to the exclusion of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from this system of public funding, to which the State, the Catholic Church and the denominations holding an *intesa* approved by statute all have access. For the Italian debate, this is no minor point.

We are accustomed to thinking of religious freedom primarily in terms of autonomy, recognition and formal equality. Less often do we consider its economic dimension. Yet material resources bear directly on the concrete capacity to organise worship, carry out social activities, and sustain communities, places and services. Strasbourg reminds us that, where the State creates a system of public benefits for certain denominations, access to those benefits cannot depend on opaque procedures or indefinite inertia.

The judgment also addresses the issue most frequently raised in public debate about the Jehovah’s Witnesses: blood transfusions. The Court does not deny the sensitivity of the matter, but it observes that the Italian Government failed to demonstrate that those religious convictions could justify the differential treatment reserved for the denomination. In other words, a sensitive argument cannot become a permanent reason for avoiding an institutional decision.

The consequences of the judgment do not concern the Jehovah’s Witnesses alone. They call into question the entire Italian system of relations between the State and religious denominations. There are communities that have been waiting for years for an institutional dialogue to begin; others that already participate, in various forms, in meeting concrete religious needs without holding an *intesa*; and still others — including several Islamic communities — that struggle even to be recognised as stable interlocutors.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to read the decision as a mere condemnation of Italy or as a confessional victory. It is, rather, an invitation to bring order to a field that has long survived on practice, postponements and ad hoc solutions. Italy’s history is distinctive: Rome is at once the capital of the Republic and the centre of world Catholicism. This peculiarity has profoundly shaped the Italian way of conceiving relations between the State and religions. Yet precisely for this reason, contemporary religious pluralism demands clearer and more reliable instruments.

The Strasbourg judgment does not impose a solution. It does not say that every denomination must obtain an *intesa*, nor that Parliament must automatically approve whatever the Government signs. It does say, however, that political discretion cannot become an absence of accountability. And this is a message that Italian politics cannot ignore if it intends to respond, in conditions of equal freedom, to the religious needs of the population.