On Friday 9 May, on the occasion of Europe Day, the Università degli Studi di Brescia will host Prof. Giovanni Pitruzzella, Judge of the Italian Constitutional Court, Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the University of Palermo and former Advocate General at the Court of Justice of the European Union. Prof. Pitruzzella will take part in the round table ‘Rights and Europe’, which will see scholars and scholars of constitutional law discussing the issue of the protection of fundamental rights in the European legal system. The appointment is at 9:30 a.m. in Room 10 of the Law Department building located in Corso Mameli, 27.
In a particularly complex and in many respects critical institutional context, it appears more urgent than ever to question ourselves on the role that the common constitutional tradition of the EU Member States can play in safeguarding the fundamental principles of Western democracy. It constitutes, in fact, a decisive instrument to ensure that the centrality of the person and his rights remains the inescapable fulcrum of the action of public powers, the exercise of which cannot disregard these rights even in part and not even in contexts marked by emergency contingencies.
The meeting - organised under the scientific direction of Antonio D'Andrea, Professor of Constitutional and Public Law, Marco Onida, President of the Association ‘Passione civile con Valerio Onida’, Marco Ladu, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the e-Campus University and Alessandro Lauro, Researcher of Constitutional and Public Law at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice - is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Valerio Onida, who passed away in 2022. Valerio Onida, who passed away in 2022, whose thought profoundly marked contemporary Italian and European legal reflection, is held on Europe Day, the initiative that celebrates peace and unity in Europe on 9 May every year. The date marks the anniversary of the ‘Schuman Declaration’, a historic proposal presented in 1950 by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman that laid the foundations for European cooperation and is considered the birth certificate of what is now the European Union. Europe Day 2025 is a special occasion because it marks the 75th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.
The day will be opened by the institutional greetings - entrusted to Deputy Vice-Chancellor Adriana Apostoli, the President of the Brescia Court of Appeal Giovanna Di Rosa and Marco Onida - and the introduction by Constitutional and Public Law Associate Nadia Maccabiani. The day's programme, moderated by Antonio D'Andrea, will then include, before the speech by Constitutional Judge Pitruzzella, the contributions of Gianpaolo Fontana, Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the University of Rome ‘Roma Tre’, Chiara Bologna, Associate Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the University ‘Alma Mater Studiorum’ of Bologna, Dimitri Girotto, Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at the University of Udine and Vittorio Di Bucci, Registrar of the Court of the European Union.
Finally, the meeting is part of the UNITA - Universitas Montium project, an Alliance composed of 12 universities and one legal entity (UNITA EEIG) from 7 countries (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine) uniting 250,000 students, a staff of 22,000 and more than 50 partners.