You are looking for Article 8 ECHR and for what it has produced in Italy, not for the text of the provision.
That is the right question to ask. The Convention is the same in every Member State. What changes from one country to the next is the point at which the national system stops protecting private and family life, and only the judgments show you where that point is.
In 2025 the European Court of Human Rights dealt with 1,763 applications concerning Italy. 1,531 of them were declared inadmissible or struck out, so they never reached an examination on the merits. The judgments delivered against Italy in the same year were 65, according to the Court’s official statistics.
I am Gianluca Piemonte, an Italian lawyer admitted to the Court of Cassation and entitled to represent applicants before the European Court of Human Rights. I work on applications to Strasbourg, and Article 8 is the provision on which Italy has been found in breach in the cases closest to my practice.
This article goes through 3 judgments that condemned Italy under Article 8 ECHR, what they changed inside the Italian legal order, and what you need before taking a case of this kind to Strasbourg.
Contents
What Article 8 ECHR protects
The text of Article 8 names 4 interests, private life, family life, home and correspondence, and the Court has never closed any of them inside a definition.
Private life is the widest. It covers personal identity, the name a person carries, physical and psychological integrity, sexual life, personal data, reputation, and relationships built at work.
The second paragraph is where cases are decided. A public authority may interfere with the right only if the interference is in accordance with the law, pursues one of the listed legitimate aims and is necessary in a democratic society. The 3 conditions are cumulative, so a State that fails one of them loses whatever the strength of the other 2.
FURTHER READING: the structure of the Convention and the rights it protects are set out in the article on the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cusan and Fazzo v. Italy, the surname a child carries
A married couple asked that their daughter be registered under the mother’s surname. The registrar refused, applying an unwritten rule that imposed the father’s surname on children born in wedlock.
CITATION — European Court of Human Rights, Cusan and Fazzo v. Italy, application no. 77/07, judgment of 7 January 2014, § 55, unofficial translation from the authentic French text
«a person’s surname concerns that person’s private and family life»
From that premise the Court found a violation of Article 14 taken together with Article 8, because the difference in treatment between mother and father rested on no reasonable justification. The judgment is available in French only, which is worth knowing if you plan to quote it in an English submission.
Godelli v. Italy, the right to know where you come from
A woman born to a mother who had chosen anonymity at birth asked to learn her biological mother’s identity. Italian law at the time opposed an absolute and permanent secret, with no procedure to check whether that original choice still reflected the mother’s will.
CITATION — European Court of Human Rights, Godelli v. Italy, application no. 33783/09, judgment of 25 September 2012, § 45, unofficial translation from the authentic French text
«the right to know one’s ascendancy falls within the scope of the notion of “private life”, which includes important aspects of personal identity, of which the identity of one’s parents forms part»
The violation was found not because maternal anonymity is contrary to the Convention in itself, but because the Italian system struck no balance at all between the 2 interests at stake. What the Court censured was the absence of any weighing exercise, not the underlying legislative choice.
S.V. v. Italy, gender identity and the cost of waiting
A transgender woman had obtained judicial authorisation for gender confirmation surgery. When she asked to change her forename, the administration replied that a change of name could follow only after the civil status records had been rectified, which in turn came after the operation.
Until then her documents carried a male forename that matched neither her appearance nor the identity a court had already recognised.
CITATION — European Court of Human Rights, S.V. v. Italy, application no. 55216/08, judgment of 11 October 2018, § 54, unofficial translation from the authentic French text
«sexual identity or identification, name, sexual orientation and sexual life fall within the personal sphere protected by Article 8»
The Court found a violation unanimously, criticising the rigidity of the Italian procedure, which left the applicant in a position of anomaly affecting every ordinary act of daily life.
FURTHER READING: the Italian procedure for legal gender recognition is explained in the article on changing gender in Italy.
What the 3 judgments have in common
Three different areas of law, one recurring defect.
In none of the 3 cases did the Court say that Italy had pursued an illegitimate aim. In all 3 it found that the Italian system had applied a rule automatically, without ever weighing the competing interests in the individual case.
That is the shape an Article 8 complaint against Italy usually takes. Not that the outcome was unfair, but that the authorities reached it without the balancing the Convention requires, and left no trace of any such reasoning in the decision.
The practical consequence is the one applicants tend to miss. Arguing that the Italian courts got Italian law wrong leads nowhere, because the Court is not a fourth instance. Showing that nobody balanced anything is a different argument, and it is the one that wins.
What changed inside Italy afterwards
A judgment from Strasbourg does not repeal a national rule by itself. In the Italian system it works through the Constitutional Court, which treats the Convention as interpreted by the European Court as an interposed norm under Article 117 of the Constitution.
After Cusan and Fazzo the Constitutional Court ruled twice on surnames. In 2016 it held unconstitutional the impossibility for parents who agree to pass on the mother’s surname as well, and in 2022 it struck down the automatic attribution of the father’s surname alone.
The picture for gender identity moved earlier and by a different route, through the Constitutional Court in 2015 and the Court of Cassation in the same year, which removed surgery as a precondition for legal recognition.
WARNING: a judgment in your favour at Strasbourg does not reopen your Italian case automatically. Reopening depends on the remedies available in the specific field, and it has to be planned from the start, not discovered afterwards.
Taking an Article 8 case against Italy to Strasbourg
Being right on the merits is not enough. The application first has to pass the admissibility filter, which is the reason why 1,531 Italian applications out of 1,763 went no further in 2025.
These are the conditions to check on your own case before writing anything.
- the application must be lodged within 4 months of the final domestic decision, a time-limit reduced by Protocol No. 15 and no longer the 6 months many pages still mention
- domestic remedies must be exhausted, meaning the effective and accessible remedies the Italian system offers
- the Article 8 complaint must have been raised at least in substance before the Italian courts, which must have had a real opportunity to put the violation right
- the applicant must have suffered a significant disadvantage, subject to the exceptions in the Convention
- the application must not be manifestly ill-founded, so it has to withstand comparison with the Court’s own case-law on similar facts
The third condition is the one that removes more Italian cases than any other. Having appealed is not the same as having raised the Convention complaint, because on a qualified right you must have asked the national courts to carry out the balancing exercise, not merely contested the result.
FURTHER READING: the procedure itself is covered in the guide on how to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, and the form in the article on the ECHR application form.
Conclusions
This article covered what Article 8 of the Convention protects, 3 judgments in which Italy was found in breach of it, the defect those 3 cases share, what the Italian Constitutional Court did with them afterwards, and the admissibility conditions that decide an Article 8 case against Italy before any discussion of the merits.
What you will not find above is the text of an Article 8 complaint. That is deliberate. The pairing between your facts, the condition of the second paragraph you decide to attack and the judgments that support it is the whole of the work, and a paragraph copied from a website is the fastest way to file somebody else’s application.
The proceedings before the European Court are conducted in writing, so you do not need to come to our office. We assist clients resident in any European State.
If your case concerns a name, an identity, family ties, your home or the privacy of your communications, write to me about it. The instruction runs in 2 separate stages, and you decide on the second one after reading the first.
- I read your final domestic decision and assess the grounds for an application. In particular I check whether the 4-month time-limit is still open, whether domestic remedies have been exhausted, whether the Convention complaint was raised before the Italian courts and above all whether the violation occurred in your own case, comparing your situation with the ones the European Court has already decided. I also look at whether arguments of international law can bring your case before an international judge
- If the grounds are there, you can instruct me for the defence before the European Court, including any translation of the documents
You do not have to change lawyer to reach Strasbourg. You can give me the whole mandate, or keep the colleague who handled the Italian proceedings and ask me for the international part only. I also advise lawyers directly when they want to take a client’s case to the European Court.
After you contact me I will send you a written quote with no obligation. My quotes are clear and transparent.
Write to supporto@studiopiemonte.com or fill in the form on the CONTACT US page. I have already helped a great many people assert their rights after an unfair trial, and I will be glad to help you too.
