In Judgment No. 84 of 2025, the Constitutional Court ruled that the constitutional challenge raised by the Prime Minister against the Sardinia Region’s law (Regional Law No. 12 of 2024), which allows the use of retired general practitioners to cover healthcare services in shortage areas, is unfounded.

According to the Government, the law not only violates Article 117, paragraph 2, letter f) of the Constitution by exceeding regional powers, but also contradicts the 2024 National Collective Agreement (ACN), which establishes that those receiving a retirement pension are not eligible to perform the activities covered by the Agreement.

However, the Court found the challenge to be without merit, stating that the provision in question clearly serves an organizational purpose aimed at protecting public health, by seeking to guarantee primary care for residents in disadvantaged areas lacking a general practitioner.
The Court affirmed that Regions may adopt extraordinary and temporary measures to promptly address difficulties in accessing essential levels of primary care. Indeed, preventing the Regions from adopting such measures “amounts to hindering them from intervening with their own tools to prevent these contingent critical issues from resulting in the sacrifice of the effectiveness of the fundamental right to health, depriving it of its inviolable core of minimum guarantees”.