30

The Italian Constitutional Court has always played a fundamental role in social protection matters, a role aiming to rationalise an only sketchy and stratified legislation. It has very often intervened by means of “additional rulings” which have notably extended social protection benefits to certain excluded social categories, and which have entailed supplementary public expenditure. This article analyses the consequences of decisions of the Constitutional Court for the public finances, not only when they lead to new and significant charges but also in those cases where decisions were made in the name of financial equilibrium. In particular, the author has sought to discover whether the constitutional judges, especially when preoccupied by a respect for financial equilibrium, went beyond their controlling roles for the constitutionality of laws, and acted rather as political opportunists, as guarantors of the institutional system. This analysis is followed by some brief reflection on Constitutional Court interventions in reforming the social protection system, and more generally on the debate about reform of the Welfare State, interventions dictated by strictly accounting requirements associated with the re-establishment of the State finances.