La Costituzione italiana delle minoranze linguistiche tra principi consolidati, riforme mancate e prossime sfide

The article deals with the protection of linguistic minorities in the Italian legal system, taking into consideration the legislative developments as well as the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court. After an historical introduction, the article is focused on the constitutional provisions and on the asymmetric protection established, at least until 1999, for the recognized linguistic and "superprotected" minorities, on the one hand, and for the unrecognized linguistic minorities that were practically ignored by the legislature, on the other hand. General law no. 482/1999 implementing art. 6 Const. lists all the historical linguistic minorities to be protected and provides for a catalogue of linguistic rights. In recent years, the Constitutional Court ruled on the constitutional legitimacy of some regional laws in relation with law no. 482/1999; the Court confirmed its restrictive approach towards the regional autonomy, but at the same time it seems that, according to the Court, in the near future, the state legislature can extend protection to other subjects, different from the members of the historical linguistic minorities. Finally, the issue of minority protection is considered in the light of the challenges imposed by migration flows as well as by internationalization.