Dalla disapplicazione di norme confliggenti alla mancata applicazione di norme vincolanti

In some recent judgments, the Supreme Court of Italy declared that judges may not apply the Euro- pean Convention of Human Rights, because its provisions may only be used either to interpret laws or to raise a question of possible conflict between a law and the Constitution in front of the Constitutional Court. This surprising statement is due both to a misreading of two Constitutional Court’s judgments dating back to 2007 and to a widespread lack of precision in identifying three notions strictly connected but bearing different meaning and scope, like self-executing treaties, directly applicable regulations and rules entailing a direct effect.