Council of State rejects CSM appeal, TAR ruling in favor of Gela prosecutor confirmed

There are no conditions to suspend the enforceability of the sentence of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court canceling the resolution with which the CSM, on 31 May 2023, appointed Paolo Fortuna, former prosecutor of Aosta, as prosecutor general of Bologna. The Council of State decided this by rejecting the precautionary requests of the Superior Council of the Judiciary and of Fortuna himself, condemning them to reimburse the court costs to the current regent prosecutor of Gela, Lucia Musti, who had made the appeal, then accepted, to the court administrative officer of Lazio, against the appointment. Musti, former acting general prosecutor in Bologna, was penalized in the CSM’s evaluations by the chats with Luca Palamara. But the TAR had deemed the appeal well founded, underlining the small number of conversations and then how these did not convey an image incompatible with the exercise of a managerial function. The Council of State, in rejecting the request for suspension of CSM and Fortuna, also believes that the TAR’s ruling has ascertained the factual error of the CSM resolution and the disproportion in the part in which it derived from the contents of the telephone conversations between Musti and Palamara the loss of the first of the prerequisites of independence, impartiality and balance. At this point we await the hearing for the discussion on the merits, on 9 July.