Animals in the Italian Legal System: Among Constitutional Provisions and Other Sources of the Law

In 2022, Article 9 of the Italian Constitution, establishing the State’s duty to protect the environment, was amended to include an express provision on the protection of animals. While the new formulation falls short of defining animals as “sentient beings”, as otherwise considered during the preparatory work, the amendment of Article 9 of the Constitution is undoubtedly a historical achievement. The Italian legal system has thereby irreversibly moved on from the traditional anthropocentric approach toward a biocentric approach and has aligned itself with the more advanced international experiences. In contrast with the Constitution, in the Italian Civil Code, consistent with the Roman approach, animals still appear as “goods”, that is, as mere things, not as subjects. This older approach, however, is not uniformly adopted throughout the legal system. Numerous provisions seem indeed informed to the notion of the animals as sentient beings, not mere things; for example some provisions of the Road Traffic Code, of the new law on condominiums, of the Criminal Code, of the legislation on animals in sports work, and more. Some progress toward a better protection of animal welfare has been made also in the sphere of tourism, where a combination of international, national, and industry (self)regulation has firmly established requirements such as sustainability and animal welfare and provides for the correct information of the consumers against distortions such as the so-called greenwashing and humane washing.